Confessions 7.19–8.11

And for you there is no evil at all, and not only for you but for your whole creation, because there is nothing outside it that could break in and corrupt the order you have imposed on it. But in its parts some things are thought evil because they do not suit certain others; yet these same things suit others and are good, and they are good in themselves. And all these things that do not suit one another suit the lower part of the universe, which we call the earth, with its cloudy and windy sky fitted to it. And far be it from me now to say, "These things should not exist," because even if I saw these alone, I would indeed long for better things, but even for these alone I ought to praise you; since from the earth "dragons and all the deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, the stormy wind, which fulfill your word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds; kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth; young men and maidens, old men with the younger, praise your name" and show that you are to be praised. And since from the heavens also they praise you, "let all your angels praise you, our God, in the heights, all your powers, sun and moon, all the stars and light, the heaven of heavens and the waters that are above the heavens; let them praise your name." I no longer longed for better things, because I was considering them all, and with a sounder judgment I weighed that higher things are indeed better than lower, but that all things together are better than the higher alone.

There is no soundness in those who are displeased with any part of your creation, as there was none in me when many things you made displeased me. And because my soul did not dare to be displeased with my God, it would not have anything that displeased it be yours. And from there it had gone off into the opinion of two substances, and it found no rest, and it spoke strange things. And turning back from there, it had made for itself a god spread through the infinite spaces of all places, and it had thought him to be you, and had set him up in its heart, and had again become the temple of its own idol, abominable to you. But after you cherished my head while I did not know it, and "closed my eyes lest they should see vanity," I ceased from myself a little, and my madness was lulled to sleep; and I awoke in you and saw you infinite in another way, and this sight was not drawn from the flesh.

And I looked back at other things, and I saw that they owe to you the fact that they exist, and that all things are bounded in you, but in another way: not as in a place, but because you hold all things in your hand in truth; and all things are true insofar as they exist, and falsehood is nothing except when something is thought to be which is not. And I saw that each thing suits not only its own place but also its own time, and that you, who alone are eternal, did not begin to work after countless spaces of time, because all spaces of time, both those that have passed and those that will pass, would neither go nor come unless you were working and abiding.

And I learned by experience that it is no wonder that bread which is pleasant to a healthy palate is torment to an unhealthy one, and that light, which is lovely to clear eyes, is hateful to sick ones. And your justice displeases the wicked; how much more the viper and the little worm, which you created good, fitted to the lower parts of your creation, to which the wicked themselves are fitted insofar as they are unlike you, but fitted to the higher parts insofar as they become more like you. And I asked what wickedness is, and I found not a substance, but the perversity of a will turned aside from the highest substance, from you, O God, toward the lowest things, casting away its inward parts and swelling outward.

And I marveled that I now loved you, and not a phantom in your place; and yet I did not stand still to enjoy my God, but I was swept up to you by your beauty and soon torn away from you by my own weight, and I fell back into these things with a groan; and this weight was carnal habit. Yet the memory of you was with me, and I had no doubt at all that there was one to whom I should cling, but that I was not yet one who could cling, since "the body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things." And I was most certain that "your invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, even your eternal power and divinity." For I was asking by what standard I approved the beauty of bodies, whether heavenly or earthly, and what was at hand to help me judge soundly about changeable things and say, "This ought to be so, that ought not." Asking, then, by what I judged when I judged in this way, I had found the unchangeable and true eternity of truth above my changeable mind. And so, step by step, I went from bodies to the soul that perceives through the body, and from there to its inner power, to which the bodily senses report external things, as far as the beasts can go; and from there again to the reasoning power, to which is referred for judgment what is taken in by the bodily senses. This power too, finding itself changeable in me, raised itself up to its own understanding and drew its thought away from habit, withdrawing from the contradictory crowds of images, so as to find what light it was flooded with when it cried out without any doubt that the unchangeable is to be preferred to the changeable, and how it knew the unchangeable itself (for unless it knew it in some way, it could never have set it with certainty above the changeable); and it arrived at That Which Is, in the flash of a trembling glance. Then indeed I saw "your invisible things, understood through the things that are made"; but I was not strong enough to fix my gaze, and my weakness was struck back and I returned to my usual things, carrying with me nothing but a loving memory, a longing, as it were, for things whose fragrance I had caught but which I could not yet eat.

And I sought a way to gain the strength that would make me fit to enjoy you, and I did not find it until I embraced "the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for ever," calling and saying, "I am the way of truth and the life," and mingling with flesh the food which I was too weak to take, since "the Word was made flesh," so that your wisdom, through which you created all things, might become milk for our infancy. For I did not hold my God, the humble Jesus, with humility, nor did I know what his weakness was meant to teach. For your Word, the eternal Truth, towering above the higher parts of your creation, raises those who are subject to it up to itself; but in the lower parts it built for itself a humble house from our clay, through which to bring down from themselves those who were to be made subject and carry them over to itself, healing their pride and nourishing their love, so that they would go no further in self-confidence, but rather become weak, seeing at their feet the Godhead made weak by sharing our "garment of skin," and, weary, would cast themselves down upon it, and it, rising, would lift them up.

But I thought otherwise, and I thought of Christ my Lord only as of a man of surpassing wisdom whom no one could equal; especially because, born wonderfully of a virgin to give an example of despising temporal things for the sake of gaining immortality, he seemed by divine care for us to have earned so great an authority as a teacher. But what mystery was contained in "the Word was made flesh," I could not even guess. I had only learned from what was handed down in writing about him that he ate and drank, slept, walked, rejoiced, was sad, and conversed; that this flesh had not been joined to your Word except together with a human soul and mind. Everyone knows this who knows the unchangeableness of your Word, which I already knew as far as I could, and I had no doubt at all about it. For at one time to move the limbs of the body by the will and at another not to move them, at one time to be affected by some emotion and at another not, at one time to utter wise sayings by signs and at another to keep silence, belong to the changeableness of soul and mind. If these things written about him were false, all the rest would also be endangered by falsehood, and no saving faith for the human race would remain in those writings. Since, then, what is written is true, I acknowledged in Christ a whole man: not the body of a man only, nor a soul with the body but without a mind, but a man himself; yet I thought him to be preferred to others not as the person of the Truth, but because of some great excellence of his human nature and a more perfect share in wisdom. Alypius, on the other hand, thought that the catholics believed God to be clothed with flesh in such a way that there was no soul in Christ besides God and flesh, and he did not think that a human mind was proclaimed in him. And since he was firmly persuaded that the things recorded of him could not be done except by a living and rational creature, he moved rather slowly toward the Christian faith itself. But later, learning that this was the error of the Apollinarian heretics, he rejoiced in the catholic faith and conformed himself to it. I, for my part, confess that it was some while later that I learned how, in the matter of "the Word was made flesh," catholic truth is distinguished from the falsehood of Photinus. For the refutation of heretics makes what your church holds, and what sound doctrine contains, stand out. "For there had to be heresies, so that those who are approved might be made manifest" among the weak.

But at that time, after reading those books of the Platonists and being admonished by them to seek incorporeal truth, I saw "your invisible things, understood through the things that are made"; and, thrust back, I sensed what it was that the darkness of my soul would not let me contemplate. I was certain that you exist, and are infinite, yet not spread through finite or infinite spaces; that you truly are, you who are always the same, not other or otherwise in any part or by any motion; and that all other things are from you, by this one most solid proof, that they exist. Of these things I was certain, yet far too weak to enjoy you. I chattered away as if I were expert, and unless I had sought your way in Christ our Savior, I would have been not expert but expired. For I had now begun to want to seem wise, full of my own punishment, and I did not weep; worse, I was "puffed up with knowledge." For where was that love which builds up on the foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus? Or when would those books teach me that? I believe it was your will that I should come upon them before I studied your Scriptures, so that it would be stamped on my memory how I had been affected by them, and so that later, when I had been tamed by your books and my wounds were tended by your healing fingers, I might discern and distinguish the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see where they must go but do not see the way, and the way that leads to the blessed homeland, not only to be seen but to be dwelt in. For if I had first been formed by your holy writings and you had grown sweet to me in familiarity with them, and I had afterward fallen upon those volumes, perhaps they would have torn me away from the solid ground of piety; or, if I had stood firm in the healthy disposition I had drunk in, I might have thought that it could be gained from those books too, if one had learned from them alone.

So I seized most eagerly on the venerable writing of your Spirit, and above all the apostle Paul; and those questions vanished in which he had at one time seemed to me to contradict himself, and the text of his discourse not to agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; and the one face of the pure words appeared to me, and I learned "to rejoice with trembling." And I began, and I found that whatever truth I had read there is said here together with the commendation of your grace: so that whoever sees should not boast as if he had not received, not only what he sees but also the ability to see ("for what does he have that he did not receive?"); and so that he may be not only admonished to see you, who are always the same, but also healed so as to hold you; and so that one who cannot see from afar may yet walk on the way by which he may come and see and hold. For even if a man "delights in the law of God according to the inner man," what will he do about "another law in his members, warring against the law of his mind and leading him captive in the law of sin, which is in his members"? For "you are just, O Lord," but "we have sinned, we have done iniquity, we have acted wickedly," and "your hand has been heavy upon us," and we have justly been handed over to the ancient sinner, the ruler of death, because he persuaded our will to be like his will, by which "he did not stand in your truth." What will a wretched man do? "Who will deliver him from the body of this death, but your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord," whom you begot coeternal and "created in the beginning of your ways," in whom "the ruler of this world found nothing" worthy of death, and yet killed him; and "the bond that was against us was canceled"? Those writings do not have this. Those pages do not have the face of this piety, the tears of confession, your sacrifice, "a troubled spirit, a contrite and humbled heart," the salvation of the people, the bride that is a city, the pledge of the Holy Spirit, the cup of our redemption. No one there sings: "Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from him is my salvation; for he is my God and my salvation, my protector; I shall be moved no more." No one there hears him calling: "Come to me, you who labor." They disdain to learn from him, because he is "gentle and humble of heart." "For you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones." And it is one thing to see the homeland of peace from a wooded summit and not find the road to it, and to strive in vain through trackless ways, beset and ambushed by fugitive deserters with their chief, the lion and the dragon; and another to keep to the way that leads there, guarded by the care of the heavenly emperor, where those who have deserted the heavenly army do not rob, for they shun it like a torment. These things sank into my very being in wonderful ways when I read "the least of your apostles," and I had "considered your works and trembled."

My God, let me remember with thanksgiving to you, and confess your mercies upon me. Let my bones be steeped in your love and say, "Lord, who is like you? You have broken my bonds; let me offer to you the sacrifice of praise." How you broke them I will tell, and all who worship you will say, when they hear it: "Blessed be the Lord in heaven and on earth; great and wonderful is his name." Your words had fastened in my heart, and I was hemmed in by you on every side. Of your eternal life I was certain, although I had seen it "in a riddle and as through a mirror"; yet all doubt about incorruptible substance, that every substance comes from it, had been taken away from me, and I desired not to be more certain of you but more steadfast in you. But in my temporal life everything was wavering, and my heart had to be cleansed of "the old leaven"; and the Way, the Savior himself, pleased me, but I was still reluctant to go through its narrow places. And you put it into my mind, and it seemed good in my sight, to go to Simplicianus, who appeared to me a good servant of yours, and your grace shone in him. I had heard also that from his youth he had lived most devoutly for you; and by then he had grown old, and in his long life of such good zeal in following your way he seemed to me to have experienced much and learned much: and so indeed it was. So I wanted him, as I talked over my turmoil with him, to tell me what would be the fitting way for someone in my condition to walk in your way.

For I saw the church full, and one went this way and another that. But I was displeased with what I was doing in the world, and it was a great burden to me, now that my desires no longer inflamed me as they used to with the hope of honor and money, to endure so heavy a servitude. For those things no longer delighted me compared with your sweetness and "the beauty of your house, which I have loved." But I was still tightly bound by a woman; and the apostle did not forbid me to marry, although he exhorted to something better, most earnestly wishing all men to be as he himself was. But I, being weaker, chose the softer place, and for this one reason I was tossed about in everything else, listless and wasting away with withering cares, because in other matters too, which I did not want to suffer, I was forced to fit in with married life, to which I was given over and bound. I had heard from the mouth of Truth that there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake; "but," he says, "let him who can receive it, receive it." Surely "all men are vain in whom there is no knowledge of God, and who could not, from the good things that are seen, find him who is." But I was no longer in that vanity; I had passed beyond it, and with the whole creation bearing witness I had found you, our Creator, and your Word, God with you and one God with you, through whom you created all things. And there is another kind of ungodly people, who, "knowing God, did not glorify him as God or give thanks." Into this too I had fallen, and "your right hand upheld me," and you took me out of it and placed me where I might recover, because you have said to man, "Behold, piety is wisdom," and "Do not wish to seem wise," because "those who call themselves wise have become fools." And I had now found the good pearl, and I ought to have sold all that I had and bought it; and I hesitated.

So I went to Simplicianus, the father of Ambrose, then bishop, in the receiving of grace, and whom Ambrose truly loved as a father. I told him the windings of my wandering. But when I mentioned that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, once rhetor of the city of Rome, who I had heard had died a Christian, had translated into Latin, he congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, full of falsehoods and deceptions "according to the elements of this world," whereas in these God and his Word are suggested in every way. Then, to exhort me to the humility of Christ, "hidden from the wise and revealed to little ones," he called to mind Victorinus himself, whom he had known very intimately when he was in Rome, and he told me about him something I will not pass over in silence. For it contains great praise of your grace, which must be confessed to you: how that most learned old man, highly skilled in all the liberal disciplines, who had read and weighed so many works of the philosophers, the teacher of so many noble senators, who, as a mark of his distinguished teaching (something the citizens of this world think outstanding), had deserved and received a statue in the Roman Forum; who until that age had been a worshiper of idols and a partaker in sacrilegious rites, with which almost the whole Roman nobility was then puffed up, breathing out portents, "monsters of every kind of god, and barking Anubis, who once held weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva," gods whom Rome had conquered and now supplicated, gods whom this old man Victorinus had defended for so many years with his thundering eloquence: he did not blush to become a child of your Christ and an infant at your font, bowing his neck to the yoke of humility and subduing his brow to the reproach of the cross.

O Lord, Lord, "who bowed the heavens and came down, touched the mountains and they smoked," by what means did you find your way into that breast? He read, as Simplicianus said, the holy Scripture, and he most studiously searched out and examined all the Christian writings, and he said to Simplicianus, not openly but privately and as a friend, "You should know that I am already a Christian." And Simplicianus answered, "I will not believe it or count you among the Christians until I see you in the church of Christ." But he laughed and said, "Do walls, then, make Christians?" And he often said this, that he was already a Christian, and Simplicianus often gave that answer, and the joke about the walls was often repeated. For he was afraid of offending his friends, proud worshipers of demons, and he thought that from the summit of their Babylonian dignity, as from the cedars of Lebanon which the Lord had not yet broken, heavy enmity would come crashing down on him. But after he had drawn strength by reading and longing, and feared to be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he were afraid to confess him before men, and appeared to himself guilty of a great crime in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of your Word while not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of proud demons, which he had accepted as their proud imitator, he lost his shame before vanity and grew ashamed before truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly he said to Simplicianus, as Simplicianus himself told it, "Let us go to the church: I want to become a Christian." And Simplicianus, beside himself with joy, went with him. And when he had been instructed in the first sacraments of instruction, not long afterward he gave in his name to be reborn through baptism, while Rome marveled and the church rejoiced. The proud saw and were angry, they gnashed with their teeth and wasted away; but for your servant "the Lord God was his hope, and he did not look to vanities and lying follies."

Finally, when the hour came to profess the faith (which at Rome is usually recited, in fixed words learned and held in memory, from a raised place in the sight of the faithful people, by those who are about to approach your grace), he said that the presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to recite it more privately, as it was customary to offer to some who seemed likely to tremble from shyness; but he preferred to profess his salvation in the sight of the holy multitude. For there was no salvation in the rhetoric he taught, and yet he had professed that publicly. How much less, then, should he have feared your gentle flock when pronouncing your word, when he had not feared crowds of madmen when pronouncing his own words? So when he went up to recite, all of them, each as he knew him, murmured his name to one another with a stir of rejoicing. And who was there who did not know him? And a hushed sound ran through the mouths of all who rejoiced together: "Victorinus, Victorinus." Quickly they broke out in exultation, because they saw him, and quickly they fell silent in attention, so as to hear him. He pronounced the true faith with splendid confidence, and all of them wanted to snatch him into their hearts. And they did snatch him, by loving and rejoicing: these were the hands that snatched him.

Good God, what happens in a man that he rejoices more over the salvation of a soul that was despaired of and set free from greater danger than if there had always been hope for it or the danger had been less? For you too, merciful Father, "rejoice more over one who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who need no repentance." And we hear with great delight when we hear how the sheep that had strayed is carried back on the shepherd's exultant shoulders, and the coin is restored to your treasuries while the neighbors rejoice with the woman who found it; and the joy of the solemn feast of your house brings tears to our eyes when it is read in your house of your younger son, that "he was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." For you rejoice in us and in your angels, who are holy with holy love. For you are always the same, because you always know in the same way all things that neither always exist nor exist in the same way.

What happens, then, in the soul, that it delights more in things it loves when they are found or restored than if it had always had them? Everything else bears witness to this too, and all things are full of testimonies crying, "It is so." The victorious general celebrates a triumph, and he would not have conquered had he not fought; and the greater the danger in battle, the greater the joy in the triumph. The storm tosses the sailors and threatens shipwreck; all grow pale at coming death; sky and sea grow calm, and they exult beyond measure because they feared beyond measure. A dear friend is sick, and his pulse reports that he is doing badly; all who long for his recovery are sick in mind with him; he gets better, and though he does not yet walk with his former strength, there is already such joy as there was not before when he walked healthy and strong. And men obtain these very pleasures of human life through discomforts, not only those that come upon them unexpectedly and against their will, but also ones they arrange and choose. There is no pleasure in eating and drinking unless the discomfort of hunger and thirst comes first. Drunkards eat salty things to create a painful thirst, and when drinking quenches it, there is delight. And it is an established custom that betrothed brides are not handed over at once, lest the husband hold cheap a bride given to him for whom, as a bridegroom, he did not sigh while she was withheld.

This is so in shameful and accursed joy, so in joy that is permitted and lawful, so in the most sincere and honorable friendship, so in him who "was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found": everywhere greater joy is preceded by greater distress. What is this, O Lord my God, when you are your own eternal joy, you yourself, and some things around you rejoice in you forever? What is it that this part of creation alternates between loss and gain, between offense and reconciliation? Is this their measure, and is this as much as you have given them, since from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the earth, from the beginning to the end of the ages, from the angel to the little worm, from the first motion to the last, you set each kind of good thing and each of your just works in its proper place, and brought each about in its proper time? Alas for me, how high you are in the heights and how deep in the depths! And you never go away, and we scarcely return to you.

Come, Lord, act: stir us up and call us back, kindle and seize us, be fragrant, grow sweet: let us love, let us run. Do not many return to you from a deeper hell of blindness than Victorinus, and approach, and are enlightened, receiving the light, and whoever receive it "receive from you power to become your children"? But if they are less known to the people, even those who know them rejoice less over them. For when joy is shared with many, the joy in each one is richer, because they warm one another and are set on fire by each other. Then, because they are known to many, they are an authority for salvation to many, and they lead the way for many who will follow; and so even those who have gone before them rejoice greatly over them, because they rejoice not over them alone. Far be it that in your tabernacle the persons of the rich should be accepted before the poor, or the noble before the lowborn, since rather "you have chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and the base things of this world and the despised you have chosen, and the things that are not, as though they were, to bring to nothing the things that are." And yet that same "least of your apostles," through whose tongue you sounded these words, when the proconsul Paulus had had his pride overthrown by his campaign and had been sent under the gentle yoke of your Christ and made a subject of the great King, he too, formerly Saul, loved to be called Paul in token of so great a victory. For the enemy is more defeated in one whom he holds more strongly and through whom he holds more people. And he holds the proud more strongly through the name of nobility, and through them he holds more people through the name of authority. So the more gratefully the heart of Victorinus was thought of, which the devil had held as an impregnable stronghold, and the tongue of Victorinus, a great sharp weapon with which he had slain many, the more abundantly your children had to rejoice, because our King "had bound the strong man," and they saw his vessels taken from him, cleansed, and made fit for your honor, and "useful to the Lord for every good work."

But when your servant Simplicianus told me these things about Victorinus, I burned to imitate him; indeed it was for this that he had told them. And when he added that in the time of the emperor Julian a law was issued forbidding Christians to teach literature and rhetoric, and that Victorinus embraced that law and chose to abandon his talkative school rather than your word, "by which you make eloquent the tongues of infants," he seemed to me not so much brave as fortunate, because he found an occasion to be free for you. I sighed for this, bound not by another's iron but by my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and from it he had made a chain for me and bound me fast. For from a perverse will came lust; and while lust is served, habit is formed; and while habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity. By these links, as it were, joined to one another (which is why I called it a chain), a hard servitude held me bound. But the new will which had begun in me, to worship you freely and to want to enjoy you, O God, the only sure delight, was not yet able to overcome the earlier one, strengthened by long standing. So my two wills, one old, the other new, the one carnal, the other spiritual, fought with each other, and by their discord they tore my soul apart.

So I understood by my own experience what I had read, how "the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh": I was in both, but I was more in what I approved in myself than in what I disapproved in myself. For in the latter it was now "no longer I," because for the most part I suffered it unwillingly rather than did it willingly. And yet habit had become more warlike against me through me, since willingly I had come to where I did not want to be. And who could justly object, when just punishment follows the sinner? And I no longer had that excuse by which I used to think that I was not yet despising the world and serving you because my perception of the truth was uncertain; for now that too was certain. But I, still bound to the earth, refused to be your soldier, and I was as afraid of being freed from all my entanglements as one ought to be afraid of being entangled.