Article
A.D. 430
So great is the veneration which popes, councils, and the whole church have paid to the memory of this glorious saint, through every succeeding age since his time, that to load our history with a list of his illustrious panegyrists would be a superfluous labour; and barely to copy the sober praises, which the most judicious Christian critics have bestowed on his extraordinary learning and sanctity, would be like carrying water to the sea. For the name of the great Saint Austin is alone the highest eulogium and panegyric, raises in all persons the most exalted idea, and commands the most profound respect. This perfect model of true penitents, this triumphing champion of our holy faith and confounder of heresies, this bright light and most glorious doctor of the church of Christ, was born on the 13th of November, in the year 354, at Tagaste, a small town of Numidia, in Africa, not far from Hippo, but at some distance from the sea, which the saint had never seen till he was grown up. His parents were of good condition, yet not very rich; his father, Patricius, was an idolater, and of a hasty choleric disposition; but by the holy example and prudent conduct of Saint Monica, his wife, he at length learned the humility and meekness of the Christian religion, and was baptized a little before his death. She bore him several children; Saint Austin speaks of his brother Navigius, who left a family behind him, and of a sister who died an abbess. Our saint had the misfortune to fall, in his youth, like the prodigal son, into the most frightful gulf of vice and spiritual miseries, of which himself has drawn a lively portraiture in the first books of his Confessions, both for his own greater humiliation, and to deplore his blindness and ingratitude towards God, to set forth the infinite riches of the divine mercy, and to propose the example of his own fall as a warning to others. If we pursue him in his youth through all those mazes in which he wandered and bewildered himself so long, it is only that we may learn to discover and shun the snares and dangers with which we are encompassed, and cleave more closely to God.
Saint Austin begins his Confessions by adoring the unchangeable and incomprehensible majesty of God, and by praising his infinite mercy, which in a wonderful manner brought him into this dying life (shall I call it, says he,) or living death, into which he himself knew not how or whence he came. The saint thanks Him who gave him this being, formed his body, furnished it with senses, and beautified it with a comely form, and who bestowed on him a mind or soul; from his birth provided him food, and constantly attended him with the comforts of his mercy, commanding him to praise his adorable majesty for all these things, to confess to Him, and sing to His holy name, who is the Most High. The saint cries out to God, “Let thy mercy suffer me to speak: what am I to Thee, that thou shouldst command me to love Thee, and shouldst be angry with me, and threaten me with great miseries if I love Thee not? Is it then a small misery not to love Thee?” He confesses, with regret, that he began to offend his gracious God even in that age which is falsely called innocent, which was passed away without leaving any traces in his memory, and which was, with respect to the darkness of his oblivion of it, much like to that which he passed in his mother’s womb. He accused himself thus from what he observed in other children; for he perceived that little ones are easily possessed with jealousy, anger, and revenge, which they sometimes express by their pale and envious looks; and they require with tears what would be hurtful if granted, and they rage and swell against their betters and those who owe them no subjection, and would have them to comply with their will, and to obey them even in things that are hurtful; they also suck in very early sentiments of vanity and pride. He laments that custom should make it appear against reason for children in this tender age to suffer correction for what certainly deserves reprehension, and what is strengthened by being flattered, and becomes sinful upon the first dawning of the use of reason; whereas there is no age which is not docile, and capable of some degree of correction by the senses, whereby the first seeds of the passions may be crushed. He deplores that when he had learned to speak, and launched further out into the tempestuous society of human life, though as yet wholly depending on the authority of his parents and the beck of elders, he multiplied his sins and miseries. By the care of his pious mother he was instructed in the Christian religion, and taught to pray. He was made a catechumen by being marked with the sign of the cross, and by blessed salt being put in his mouth; and whilst he went to school in his own town, falling dangerously ill, he desired baptism, and his mother got every thing ready for it; but he on a sudden grew better, and it was deferred. This was done lest he should afterwards stain the grace of that sacrament, considering the great billows of temptations that were like to beset him after his childhood. This custom of deferring baptism, for fear of sinning under the weight and obligations of that sacrament, Saint Austin most justly condemns; but then the want of a sense of the sanctity of that sacrament, and the frequent perfidiousness and sacrileges of Christians in defiling it, by relapsing into sin, is an abuse which, in these latter ages, calls for our tears and for all our zeal. The church has long since forbidden the baptism of infants ever to be deferred: but it is one of the principal duties of pastors to instruct the faithful in the rigorous obligations which that sacrament lays them under, and to teach them highly to value and to watch carefully to preserve the grace which they received by it.
Patricius, who was a worldly man, and continued still an idolater, perceived that his son Austin had an excellent genius, and a wonderful disposition for learning, and with a view to his future preferment, spared nothing to breed him up a scholar. Here the saint thanks God, that though the persons who pressed him to learn, had no other end in view than to satisfy a desire of penurious riches and ignominious glory; yet divine Providence made a good use of their error, and forced him to learn for his great profit and manifold advantage. But herein he accuses himself that he sinned, often studying only by constraint, disobeying the commands of his parents and masters, not writing, reading, or minding his lessons so much as was required of him; and this he did, not for want of wit or memory, but out of the love of play. He dreaded correction, and prayed to God, when a little one, with great earnestness, that he might escape punishment at school, regarding it as his great and grievous evil; for which dread he was derided by his masters and parents.
Though the age of children is frequently indocile to severe discipline, and stands in need of restraint, yet it is generally better governed by generous motives of virtue and a filial awe than by much servile fear; and Saint Austin seems to complain of austere pedagogues who multiply to youth that labour and sorrow through which the sons of Adam are all obliged to pass; whereas their tasks might often be made in some degree agreeable, and scholars might be induced to love them upon principles of duty and virtue; for “no one,” says the saint, “doth well what he doth against his will.” He takes notice of the miseries of the depraved human condition; for these severe masters were guilty themselves, in their ambitious projects and idle amusements and pleasures, of greater follies than they chastised in the children; only “the toys of men are called business.” It was a more fatal abuse that these masters by their own passions taught children, whose observation nothing escapes, to authorise themselves in habits of anger, envy, vanity, pride, and the like vices; for the pedagogue who chastised his scholar for a less fault, in the mean while, if overcome in some petty dispute by a fellow teacher, was more racked with envy and choler than the boy ever was when outdone by a playfellow at ball. This, however, excuses not the faults of the scholars. Saint Austin humbly acknowledges that he at that age fell also into vanity, pleasing himself with the pride of surpassing his companions at play, and loving to have his ears scratched with vain praises, that they might itch the more. A worse curiosity drew him to the dangerous entertainments of those who were older—public shows, plays, and other diversions of the theatre. He declares that God justly turns sin into its own chastisement, its pleasures always leaving a sting, and filling the mind with gall and bitterness. “For thou hast ordained it, and so it is,” says he, “that every inordinate affection should be to itself its own punishment and torment.”
In his studies he liked Latin very well, having learned that language from his nurses, and others with whom he conversed. Whilst he was little he hated Greek, and the perplexing rules of the grammar of that tongue; and, for want of understanding it sufficiently, he could not then relish the beauties of Homer; but the Latin poets became his early delight. Herein he laments that he filled his head with the wanderings of Æneas, whilst he forgot his own wanderings, and he shed tears for the death of Dido, when he beheld himself with dry eyes perishing from God, miserable wretch as he was; “for what can be more miserable,” says he, “than one that is in misery, yet hath no compassion for himself? than one who wept for the death of Dido, occasioned by her love for Æneas, yet wept not for his own death, caused by not loving Thee, O Lord?” Poesy, however, not only enlarged his knowledge of languages, and exceedingly opened the faculties of his mind, especially that of invention, the ground of a creating or original genius, but this study also gave him a sublimity of thought and expression, by its exalted eloquence, by which, with elegance and decent propriety, it raises the mind above nature, which rhetoric closely confines within its bounds; and to poetry he was indebted for the art of employing in oratory frequent lively images and bold touches.
The saint thanks God for many good endowments of his childhood, and for his progress in learning, all the fruits of which he offers to God; and begs that he may be enabled to refer them purely to his service, so as never to speak, write, read, cast accounts, or make use of any other profitable thing that he had learned but for the divine honour. He humbly asks pardon for the sins he had committed by taking delight in his learning, and in the misuse of his wit, being pleased with applause given to his exercises above those of many others of his age, which was mere smoke and wind; his wit and tongue ought rather to have been employed in the praises of God. He complains that some scholars were more ashamed and afraid of incurring the disgrace of men by a barbarism or solecism, than they were of offending God; and that an orator will sometimes declaim before a mortal judge with implacable hatred against his enemy, or detract from his reputation, whilst he is extremely careful not to let slip any impropriety in his discourse. From such a pernicious example he learned to be more afraid of uttering a solecism in discourse than of being guilty of envy, or of deceiving his tutor, masters, or others by lies for the sake of play, for which sins he grievously laments. He also deplores the sins of theft which he committed by stealing little things out of his parents’ cellar, or from their table, either to gratify his gluttony, or to give to his playfellows. He confesses in particular that one night he and a company of wicked youths stole some pears from a neighbour’s tree near his father’s garden, out of mere wantonness, and a lust of doing what they ought not to do; for the stolen fruit was bad, and they only threw it to the hogs. In this sin he laments the strange seduction of bad company, and of that friendship which is an enemy to the soul. Because some among such companions say: “Let us go, let us do it,” every one is ashamed not to be shameless. The most fatal rock against which Austin split, was the execrable vice of impurity, into which he fell in the sixteenth year of his age. He was led into this gulf by reading lascivious plays in Terence, by sloth, by frequenting stage entertainments, and by bad company and example.
Austin went to school first in his own town; then his father sent him to Madaura, a neighbouring city, where he studied grammar, poetry, and rhetoric. When he was sixteen years old his father made him return to Tagaste, designing to send him to finish his studies at Carthage; but before he executed this project, he kept him a whole year at home. During this time the young man, slighting the good advice of his mother, fell into lewd company, being induced to it by idleness; and by the indulgence of his father, who had not yet received baptism, and whose only ambition was to make this son a scholar. Youth ought to be constantly applied to some serious employment; a short interval of idleness between coming from school and going to business, often enervates the mind, takes off the edge of its activity and love of application, and destroys the advantage of good habits, and the fruit of whole years; and the disorder is often beyond recovery. Austin, during the interval of this year, gave himself up to pastimes and diversions, particularly to sporting and catching of birds, in which he bore incredible fatigues. In the mean time his passions grew unruly, and his father took no care of his growing up in virtue provided he was eloquent. His mother indeed secretly admonished him with great solicitude to keep himself free from vice; “which,” says the saint, “seemed to me but the admonitions of a woman, which I was ashamed to obey; whereas they were thy admonitions, O God, and I knew it not. By her thou didst speak to me, and I despised thee in her. Yet I knew it not, and I rushed on with so much blindness, that amongst my equals I was ashamed of being less guilty than others when I heard them bragging of their flagitious actions; and I had a mind to do the like.”
Austin went to Carthage towards the end of the year 370, in the beginning of the seventeenth year of his age. There he easily held the foremost place in the school of rhetoric, and applied himself to his studies with so much eagerness and pleasure, that it was with great difficulty he was drawn from them. But his motives were vanity and ambition, and in his studies he was pleased with pride, and puffed up with self-conceit; though he hated open arrogance, and abhorred the abusive wits called Eversores, who made it their cruel diversion to insult and impudently deride others, especially strangers, only to gratify a malicious mirth. Vincent the Rogatist, his enemy, acknowledges, that he always loved decency and good manners even in his irregularities; but this was no more than a worldly and exterior decency; for he plunged himself headlong into the filth of impurity. The world authorizes many criminal occasions of vice, which, by the sanction of example, pass among many for innocent. This reflection extorted from Saint Austin after his conversion the following complaint: – “Woe to thee, O torrent of custom among men! Who will resist thee? who will stop thy impetuous tide?” He was by the force of example drawn into wicked company and dangerous amusements, especially into a fondness for tragedy and other stage entertainments, which, being full of the images of the most infamous passions, entertained that fire which had already begun to devour him.
His father Patricius died soon after he had been baptized, in 371: but Austin still continued his studies at Carthage. Among the works of Cicero which he read, in the nineteenth year of his age, he fell upon one which is now lost, entitled Hortensius, which was an exhortation to philosophy. By it he was strongly affected, and was inflamed with a great desire and love of wisdom, and filled with a contempt of riches and honours, and from that time laid aside all expectation of magistracies and high worldly preferments. Being only twenty yeas old he heard the masters speak with great boasting of Aristotle’s book, of the ten categories or predicaments; he therefore eagerly read it over by himself, and understood it all without a master. But this book led him to place God in the category of substance, and to reason of him in a corporeal manner.
He at length grew weary of reading Cicero’s Hortensius, and the books of the heathen philosophers, because Christ was not mentioned in them, whose name he had sucked in, as it were, with his mother’s milk, and deeply retained. He desired therefore to read the holy scriptures; but was offended with the simplicity of the style; and swelling with pride as if he was endued with a great genius, he could not relish their humility, or penetrate their spirit. Soon after this he fell into the sect of the Manichees, in which he continued between eight and nine years from the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth year of his age. Vice, especially that of impurity, strangely degrades and infatuates the mind, creates an utter distaste and loathing of spiritual things, and renders the soul incapable of raising her thoughts and affections to heavenly objects; this foul vice blinds the understanding, debauches the faculty of reason, and perverts the will and all the other powers of the soul, of which no example can be more amazing than that of king Solomon. This dreadful blindness accounts for the fall of so great a genius as Austin was into the most monstrous of heresies. Pride was another occasion of his ruin. “I sought with pride,” says he, “what only humility could make me find. Fool that I was, I left the nest imagining myself able to fly; and I fell to the ground.” His vanity was soothed and flattered by the Manichees, who pretended to try every thing by the test of bare reason, and scoffing at all those who paid a due deference to the authority of the Catholic Church, as if they shackled reason, and walked in trammels. It was by this artifice that he was seduced and caught in their nets; they promised to show him every thing by demonstration, banishing all mystery, and calling faith weakness, credulity, and ignorance. “They said that, setting aside dreadful authority, they would lead men to God, and free them from all error by reason alone.” Isaac Beausobre hence infers, that before Saint Austin’s time Catholics furiously extolled the authority of the church. He ought to have added, that Saint Austin afterwards, upon mature consideration, found that it is highly rational, with regard to supernatural truths, to acquiesce in the testimony of God, manifested by the authority of the church derived from him, guided by his unerring Spirit, in conserving unviolated his divine revelation, of which we have the strongest assurance given us by the same revelation, confirmed to us by evident miracles, and other motives of credibility, to which, upon an impartial review, no one can prudently refuse assent.
Modern Socinians, and others, who boast mightily of making reason their only guide, are driven by their own principles into the most glaring inconsistencies and monstrous absurdities against reason itself, as Saint Austin afterwards discovered of the ancient Manichees: whereas reason leads us, as it were, by the hand to divine revelation, which, far from opposing it, shows its insufficiency in things that lie beyond its reach, and offers its own noonday light to direct us safely to the most necessary and important truths. By slighting and contemning this secure and sober method of attaining the true knowledge of divine mysteries, so great a wit unhappily fell into the snares of the Manichees. Writing to his friend Honoratus, who was still detained in those errors, to which he had himself persuaded him, he lays open this to have been the source of his ruin, that, relying too much on the strength of his own reason, he despised the direction and authority of the Catholic church. “You know, Honoratus,” says he, “that upon no other ground we adhered to these men. What else made me, rejecting, for almost nine years together, the religion which was instilled into me in my childhood, a follower and diligent hearer of these men, only their saying that we are overawed by superstition, and that faith is obtruded on us without reason being given; whereas they tie none to believe, except upon the truth being first examined and cleared up. Who by such promises would not have been inveigled? especially a young man, desirous of truth, and by a reputation among learned men in the schools, already grown proud and talkative. They derided the simplicity of the Catholic faith, which commanded men to believe before they were taught by evident reason what was truth.” Saint Austin frequently teaches, in his other works, that this is the general method of other heretics, and the usual occasion of miscarriages in faith. “It is,” says he, “as it were, a rule amongst all heretics, that they endeavour to overbear with the name and promise of reason, the most steady authority of the church, which is firmly founded; and this they are forced to do, because they perceive themselves to be most contemptibly worsted, if their authority should once come to be compared with that of the Catholic church.” And in another place: “All heretics generally deceive by the ostentatious promise of science, and reprehend the simplicity of believers.”
Saint Austin tells us, that the chief questions which gravelled him, and to which the Manichees promised a solution, were: Whence came evil? and the difficulty of forming a clear apprehension of a spirit; whence he was persuaded to imagine God to be corporeal; and, by listening to those masters of error, he was brought by insensible degrees to such folly as to believe, that when a fig is gathered, both it and its mother-tree weep with milky tears; and that if some Manichæan saint should eat it (after it has been plucked by another’s crime, and not his own) particles of good intelligences, or rather of the Deity, which were imprisoned in the fruit, are restored to liberty. However, soon perceiving that these heretics were more dexterous in disputing against others, than in defending or proving their own tenets, on this account he remained rather a seeker than a perfect Manichee, and continuing among them only in the rank of a hearer, he would never be initiated among their elect. In the meantime his heart was swelled with pride by his success in frequent disputations with several Catholics, in which, by the subtlety of his wit, and quickness in reasoning, he seemed unhappily victorious; and he engaged several of his friends in the same errors with himself; among others, Alipius, and his patron and benefactor, Romanianus, in whose house he lodged during his studies at Carthage. He had attained to a perfect understanding of most of the liberal sciences at scarcely twenty years of age; but says of his learning at that time, because he did not apply himself with it to the true knowledge of God: “What did this profit me, when indeed it did me harm?”
In the twentieth year, to ease his mother of the charge of his education, he left Carthage, and returning to her, set up a school of grammar and rhetoric at Tagaste; but she, who was a good Catholic, and never ceased to weep and pray for his conversion, did not sit at the same table, or eat with him, hoping by this severity and abhorrence of his heresy, to make him enter into himself. Some time after, finding her own endeavours to reclaim him unsuccessful, she repaired to a certain bishop, and with tears besought him to discourse with her son upon his errors. The prelate excused himself for the present, alleging that her son was yet unfit for instruction, being intoxicated with the novelty of his heresy, and bloated with conceit, having often puzzled several Catholics who had entered the lists with him, and were more zealous than learned. “Only pray to our Lord for him,” said he, “your son will at length discover his error and impiety.” She still persisted, with many tears, importuning him that he would see her unhappy son; but he dismissed her, saying: “Go your way; God bless you; it cannot be that a child of those tears should perish.” Which words she received as an oracle from heaven. She was also comforted by a dream, in which she seemed to see a young man, who, having asked the cause of her sorrow and daily tears, bid her be of good courage, for where she was, there her son also was. Upon which she, looking about, saw Austin standing upon the same plank with herself. This assurance, and her confidence in the divine mercy, gave her present comfort; but she was yet to wait several years for the accomplishment of her earnest desires, and to obtain it by many importunate prayers and tears, which she could not but put forth in abundance, while she saw her beloved son an enemy to that God whom she loved far more than her son or herself.
Austin had a dear friend, who had been for several years the companion of his studies, to whom he had been accustomed to unbosom himself without reserve in all his cares. This individual companion was in the bloom of life, and, through his persuasion, had been involved in the Manichæan errors. Falling sick, he was converted to the Catholic church, and baptized. Austin rallied him on that score, but he, with an unexpected liberty, told him that if he meant to continue his friend, he should speak to him no more in that manner; and that if he did, he should fly from him with horror, and regard him as his enemy. This young man soon after relapsed into a fever, like his first distemper, and died in great sentiments of piety and religion. The loss of this friend was a grievous affliction to Austin; his heart was overwhelmed with darkness and grief; he seemed to see the image of death in every thing that he beheld; his country and his own house seemed full of horror; all places and things where he had formerly enjoyed him were turned into bitter torment, because they were now without him, and Austin’s eyes sought him in all places, though they found him in none. All things in the world were become irksome and odious to him, because they did not restore the person whom he had lost, and nothing said to him, as before everything seemed to do: “He will shortly come to you.” Tears and mourning had succeeded his friend in the dearest place of his affection, and to weep or grieve was become the sole pleasure of his life.
Not being able any longer to bear his native country, he removed to Carthage, where time and new connexions wore away his grief. Ambition and vanity had likewise a share in that step, the capital of Africa being a greater theatre for the displaying of his abilities. At Carthage he opened a school of rhetoric, gained great applause in the public disputations, and carried away the principal prizes in the theatre for the best performances in poesy and oratory; but he laments his blindness that he was seduced by pride in the sciences, and by superstition, under a false name of religion; following in the first the emptiness of popular glory, the shouts of the theatre, and contentious disputes for crowns of hay, and such like fooleries; and seeking in a false religion to be purged from the sins of his intemperance and lusts, by carrying food to the elect and saints, which was to be moulded in their stomachs into angels and gods, by whom he was to be delivered. Considering this his folly, he cries out to God in a feeling and humble acknowledgment of his own weakness: “What am I to myself without thee, but my own guide falling headlong down a precipice.” He began to apply himself to judiciary astrology, but soon abandoned that fallacious study, being informed that it consisted altogether in tricks and deceit. When he was about six or seven and twenty years of age, he wrote two or three books, De Pulchro et Apto; or, On what is beautiful and decent or fit in things; which work is lost. He began, about that time, to dislike the stories related by the Manichees concerning the system of the world, the heavenly bodies, and the elements. “This kind of knowledge,” said he, “is not essential to religion, but it is essential not to lie, and not to boast of knowing what we know not.”
There was in Africa at that time a Manichæan bishop, named Faustus, much celebrated by those of his sect as a wonderful man, and perfectly skilled in all manner of sciences. Austin had waited with great impatience for his coming to Carthage, hoping he would satisfy all his doubts; but when he arrived, he found, by a long conference, that he was a good speaker, but said no more than the rest of the Manichees, only explained himself with greater grace and facility. Austin wanted something more than words, and was too solid a wit to be contented with mere form; and perceiving how little satisfaction he received from this great doctor of the sect, he from that time disapproved it entirely, being then twenty-nine years of age. Nevertheless, his prepossessions against the Catholic faith hindered him from turning his inquiries on that side; so that, after he despaired of discovering the truth in his own sect, not knowing where to find any thing better, he determined still to remain content with what he had stumbled upon, till he should fall upon something that should appear more reasonable and satisfactory. The truly ingenious and pious Mr. Abraham Woodhead, who, leaving Oxford, embraced the Catholic faith, wishes many now-a-days would take warning to arm themselves against the same pernicious sloth; supposing several now to labour under the like disease, who, as it were, purposely deprive themselves of the grace of being enlightened with the truth, by not inquiring after it, only from the false informers of their own party, to which, by chance, or a false choice, they are first addicted.
Austin, whilst he remained in this fluctuation of mind, being disgusted at the disorderly behaviour of the students at Carthage, resolved to go to Rome, where scholars were kept under stricter discipline. This foreign journey he undertook without his mother’s consent, and herein he praises the divine goodness, which by his irregularities themselves, brought him to their cure; by afflicting his mother, and refusing to hear her present request, by which she prayed that her son might not sail, God made her redouble her earnestness and her tears, that he might accomplish the main thing which she always requested, which was the conversion of this son. At Rome he applied himself to the Manichees, and lodged with one of that sect, merely on account of former acquaintance, and because he was not yet resolved on any other religion. Soon after his arrival in that city, he fell sick of a violent fever, and seemed reduced by it to the very point of dying, and perishing for ever. “For whither had I gone,” says he, “if I had then died, but into those flames and torments which I deserved?” But it pleased God to raise him from this dangerous sickness, through the prayers of his mother, which she never ceased to put forth for his conversion, though she was then absent, and ignorant of his present danger. Whilst he professed rhetoric in that great city, his school was frequented by the most famous wits of that age, and none ever went from it without either being struck with admiration at his learning and parts, which were rendered more amiable by the natural sweetness of his temper; or being moved with envy at the honour he acquired in his disputations; but finding the scholars there often unjust enough to change frequently their masters, in order to cheat them of their salary for teaching, he grew weary of the place; and it happening that deputies were sent from Milan, where the emperor Valentinian the Younger kept his court, to Symmachus, prefect of Rome, who was himself a great orator, requiring that he should send thither some able master of rhetoric, Austin made suit to be the man. He was strongly recommended by several persons of consideration, and having given Symmachus proofs of his capacity, was chosen by him, and accordingly sent.
At Milan he was received with great applause, and the most ingenious persons of that city were soon convinced that he deserved the high opinion they had entertained of him. The holy bishop, Saint Ambrose, gave him particular marks of his respect. Saint Austin was very desirous of being acquainted with him, not as with a teacher of the truth, which he thought impossible to be found among the Catholics, but only as a person of great learning and reputation, and one who was obliging and friendly to him. He frequently attended his sermons, not with any desire of profiting by them, but to gratify his curiosity, and to inform himself whether his eloquence answered the fame he had heard concerning him. He was very intent upon his words, and found his discourse elegant and more learned than that of Faustus, the Manichæan, yet not so pleasing in the delivery. Austin aimed only at gratifying his ears, and despised the matter which the bishop treated: yet his doctrine, like a distilling rain, insensibly made impressions on his heart, and caused the seeds of virtue to spring forth therein. He began to think there was good argument and reason in what he said, and that the Manichees unjustly derided and cast contempt on the writings of the law and the prophets; but he was not yet convinced of the goodness of the Catholic cause, and he continued in suspense, withholding his heart from giving any assent, for fear of a precipice; though he learned from Saint Ambrose’s discourses that Catholics did not hold what the Manichees charged them with. In the mean time, in the pursuit of honours, riches, and a suitable marriage, he was often tormented with bitter anxieties, the remembrance of which made his soul afterwards cleave faster and more sweetly to God, who at length rescued him from that tenacious birdlime of death. Being to pronounce, on the calends of January, in 385, a panegyric in praise of the emperor, and of the newly elected consul, Bauto, who was to be present, he was very anxious for the success; and, passing through the streets of Milan, he envied the happiness of a poor beggar whom he saw there laughing and merry, and complained to his friends what torments our own folly creates, only to purchase a tranquillity which perhaps we can never attain; but which that poor man seemed to enjoy in the trifling alms he had gathered that day. “It is true,” says he, “his joy is not real; but that which my ambition sought after much less so.”
In the search of truth he was still perplexed about the origin of evil, and suffered a secret anguish in his soul to which only God was witness; for neither was his time sufficient nor his tongue able to express the inward tumult of his soul. He also found great difficulty in conceiving God to be a pure spirit, without any corporeal extension, having been accustomed to the gross imagination of apprehending him as corporeal and extended through all the empire of his goodness, according to the idea of the Manichees, which differed entirely from that of the Anthropomorphites, who apprehended the divine substance to resemble a human body. In correcting this false notion he received great light by reading the works of Plato, and some other philosophers of his sect, who speak of the Eternal Word, and of incorporeal substances, in a manner which seemed to him clear and perspicuous. He became sensible of the necessity of admitting incorporeal substances, though (our ideas of them being conveyed to us chiefly through the inlets of our senses) we apprehend them imperfectly, and express them by analogical terms drawn from corporeal images. He therefore acknowledged that God must necessarily be an eternal, infinite, incomprehensible, and unchangeable being, and a most pure and perfect spirit; also that there is nothing in the creation absolutely evil. He seemed to hear the divine voice crying to him from on high: “I am the meat of those that are grown up: grow thou up, and thou shalt feed upon me: neither shalt thou convert me into thee, like thy corporeal food; but thou shalt be changed into me.”
He found the writings of the Platonic philosophers bred in his soul pride, and not humility, making him to have a mind to seem wise, and leaving him full of his punishment, instead of teaching him to bewail his own misery. Finding nothing in them about the great mystery of man’s redemption, or Christ’s incarnation, he with great eagerness of mind betook himself to read the New Testament, especially the writings of Saint Paul, in which he then began to take great delight. Here he found the testimonies of the Old Testament admirably illustrated, the glory of heaven displayed, and the way clearly pointed out which leadeth us thither; here he learned that which he had long felt, that he had a law in his members warring against the law in his mind, and that nothing could deliver him from this body of death but the grace of Jesus Christ. He perceived an infinite difference between the doctrine of him who styled himself the last of the apostles, and that of those proud philosophers who esteemed themselves the greatest of men. Austin himself was now convinced of the truth and excellency of that virtue which the divine law prescribes in the Catholic church, but was still prejudiced with such an apprehension of insuperable difficulties in the practice, as kept him from resolutely entering upon it.
Under his difficulties he addressed himself to Simplician, a priest of Milan, whom Pope Damasus had formerly sent from Rome to Saint Ambrose to be his instructor and tutor, who was then beloved by him as his father, and afterwards succeeded him in the bishopric of Milan. This holy man was in a very advanced age, and had served God with great piety from his youth. To him Austin gave an account of the round of his wanderings and errors, and mentioned his reading certain books of the Platonics, which had been translated into Latin by Victorinus, who had formerly been professor of rhetoric in Rome, and died a Christian. Simplician commended his choice of these books, and related to him how himself had been instrumental in the conversion of this Victorinus; for that very learned old man who taught most of the senators of Rome, and had the honour of a statue set up in the Forum, embraced the faith of Christ. A fear of offending his friends, the Roman senators, those proud worshippers of devils, from whom he apprehended great storms of malice would fall upon him, made him defer his baptism for some time; but being encouraged by Simplician he overcame that temptation, and trampling the world under his feet, was instructed and baptized by him. When Julian the Apostate forbade Christians to teach the sciences, Victorinus with joy quitted his school. Austin was strongly touched by so generous an example, and he envied the felicity of Victorinus more than he admired his fortitude; but was still held captive under the slavery of his passions.
He mournfully complains as follows: “I sighed and longed to be delivered, but was kept fast bound, not with exterior chains or irons, but with my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and of it he had made a chain, with which he had fettered me fast; for, from a perverse will was created a wicked desire or lust, and the serving this lust produced custom, and custom not resisted produced a kind of necessity, with which as with certain links fastened one to another, I was kept close shackled in this cruel slavery. I had no excuse as I pretended formerly when I delayed to serve thee, because I had not yet certainly discovered thy truth; for now I knew it, yet I was still fettered. The load of the world agreeably kept me down, as it happens in sleep; and the desires by which I meditated to rise, were but like the stragglings of such as would awake, who nevertheless are still overcome with drowsiness, and fall back into their former slumber, whilst a heavy laziness benumbs their limbs, though reason tells them it is wrong, and that it is high time to arise. I had nothing now to reply to Thee when Thou saidst to me: Arise thou that sleepest, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten thee. I had nothing, I say, at all to reply, being now convinced by thy faith, but certain lazy and drowsy words: Presently, by and by, let me alone a little while longer; but this presently did not presently come; these delays had no bounds, and this little while ran out to a long time.” It happened in the mean time that one Pontitianus, an African, who had an honourable employment in the emperor’s court, and was a very religious man, came one day to pay a visit to Austin and Alipius; and finding a book of Saint Paul’s epistles lying on the table, took occasion to speak to them of the life of Saint Antony, and was surprised to find that his name had been to that hour unknown to them. They were astonished to hear of miracles so well attested, done so lately in the Catholic Church, and did not know before Pontitianus mentioned it, that there was a monastery full of fervent servants of God without the walls of that very city where they lived under the care of Saint Ambrose. Pontitianus, seeing them very attentive to him, discoursed long upon this subject, and related that, whilst the court was at Triers, one afternoon, when the emperor was entertained with public sports in the circus, he and three others went out to walk in the gardens near the city, he with one companion going one way, and the other two another; and that these two happened to light upon a little cottage where dwelt certain servants of God poor in spirit, of whom is the kingdom of God, and there they found a book in which was written the life of Saint Antony. This life one of them began to read, and then to admire, and soon to be inflamed: and whilst he was yet reading, to think of embracing the same kind of life; for he was one of those who were called agents in the emperor’s service, whose business it was to collect taxes, make provisions for the court, and execute particular commissions by order of the emperor or the prefect of the prætorium. Then suddenly filled with holy love and zeal, and a sober shame, and angry at himself, he cast his eyes upon his friend, and said to him: “Tell me, I pray, with all the pains we take, what doth our ambition aspire to? what is it we seek, and propose to ourselves? Can we have any greater hopes in the court than to arrive at the friendship and favour of the emperor? And when this is obtained, what is there in it that is not brittle and full of dangers? Through how many dangers do we ascend to this greater danger? And how long will it last? But behold, if I please, I become this moment the friend and favourite of God, and such I remain for ever.” He turned his eyes again to the book, labouring in the inward conflict of his mind, and in the throes of a new life. In the mean time his heart was interiorly changed and entirely emptied, and disengaged from the world; he often fetched deep sighs as he went on reading, till his soul being wholly subdued by divine grace, he took a firm resolution that moment to enter upon a better course. “I have now,” said he, “bid a final adieu to that our former hope, and am fully resolved to have no other pursuit but that of serving God. I begin from this very hour, in this very place. If you do not imitate my retreat, do not obstruct my resolution.” The other answered, that he would constantly adhere to his companion in so noble a warfare, for so high a reward. By this time Pontitianus and the other who had walked with him, came to the same place, and put them in mind of returning home; but upon hearing the resolution they had taken, they congratulated with them, and took leave of them, recommending themselves to their prayers. Both of them that remained in the cottage, had been contracted to young ladies, who, as soon as they heard of this, consecrated their virginity in like manner to God.
This example, and the discourse of Pontitianus had a powerful influence on the mind of Saint Austin, and raised strong emotions in his breast, and he saw, as it were in a glass, his own filthiness and deformity, which caused him to loathe and abhor himself. In his former half desires of conversion, he had been accustomed to beg of God the grace of continency, but so as to be at the same time in some measure afraid of being heard too soon. “In the first dawning of my youth,” says he, “I had begged of thee chastity, but by halves, miserable wretch that I am: and I said, Give me chastity and continency, but not yet awhile; for I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and presently heal me of the disease of concupiscence, which I rather wished to have satiated than extinguished.” Now he began to be ashamed and grieved to find his will had been so weak and divided; and no sooner was Pontitianus departed, but he applied himself to Alipius in these words: “What are we doing who thus suffer the unlearned to start up, and seize heaven by force, whilst we with all our knowledge remain behind cowardly and heartless, and wallow still in the mire? What! because they have outstripped us, and are gone before, are we ashamed to follow them? and is it not more shameful not even to follow them?” This he spoke with an unusual and extraordinary tone of voice, and his countenance was entirely altered; and he immediately got up, and went into the garden. Alipius was astonished, not so much at his words, as at his pathetical manner of expressing them, and at the violent commotion in which he saw him labouring within his breast, and he following him step by step into the garden.
They sat down at as great a distance as they could from the house, and there Austin groaned in bitter indignation against himself. We cannot better describe the tempest and furious agitation of his soul at that time than in his own words: “I now was enraged at myself,” says he, “that I did not courageously at once resolve on what my reason convinced me to be so good and necessary to be done. I would, and I would not; I was, as it were, divided between myself and myself; I shook my chain with which I was fettered, but could not be released from it. Thou, O Lord, continuedst to press sore upon me in my interior, with a severe mercy, redoubling the stripes of fear and shame lest I should leave off struggling, and my chain should grow again, and bind me faster than ever. I said within myself: ‘Come, let it now be done; let it be done this moment.’ Neither yet did I do it quite, demurring still a while, to die unto death, and live unto life. Trifles of trifles, and vanities, my old mistresses, hung about me, and pulling me by the garment of the flesh, softly whispered to me, ‘Wilt thou then forsake us? From this moment shall we be no more with thee for ever? Wilt thou never hereafter taste those delights? From this moment shall this or that be no more allowed thee for ever?’ Now I heard these suggestions not as boldly confronting me, and opposing me to my face, but as muttering behind me, and secretly pulling me that I should look back upon them; and they somewhat retarded me, whilst I delayed to snatch myself away, and shake them off, and to spring forward whither I was called; and the violence of evil custom said to me: ‘Dost thou think that thou canst live without these or those delights? But the chaste dignity of continency enticed me to come forward, and, to encourage me to fear nothing, stretched forth to receive and embrace me her loving arms full of crowds of good examples. There were great numbers of boys and girls, young men and maidens, grave widows and old women virgins, persons of all ages; and in all these continency was the fruitful mother of chaste delights from thee, O Lord, her heavenly bridegroom; and she laughed at me with a kind of derision by way of drawing me on, as if she had said: ‘And art not thou able to do what these men and these maidens do? Or are these able in themselves, and not in the Lord their God? He gave me to them. Why standest thou upon thyself, and therefore dost not stand? Throw thyself upon him, and fear nothing. He will receive and will heal thee.’”
Austin was exceedingly ashamed that he should still hear the whispers of those fooleries; and the Holy Ghost, inviting him to chastity, seemed again to say to him: “Stop thine ears against those unclean monsters. They tell thee of delights, but not as the law of the Lord thy God.” This mighty tempest increasing every moment in his soul, when deep consideration had gathered together all his misery before his view, a very great shower of tears flowed from his eyes, and conceiving solitude to be more fit for weeping he withdrew from Alipius, who beheld him with great amazement. He removed to a great distance from his friend, that his presence might not disturb him, and he threw himself down under a fig-tree, and there gave free vent to a torrent of tears. He cried out to God to this purpose: “How long, O Lord! wilt thou be angry for ever? Remember not my past iniquities.” And perceiving himself still held back by them, he cast forth miserable complaints, and reproached himself, saying: “How long? How long? To-morrow, To-morrow! Why not now? Why does not this hour put an end to my filthiness?” These complaints he uttered, and he wept with most bitter contrition of heart, when on a sudden he heard, as it were, the voice of a child, from a neighbouring house, which singing, frequently repeated these two words in Latin, Tolle Lege; Tolle Lege. That is: “Take up, and read; Take up, and read.” Presently his countenance being changed, he began to consider whether in any kind of play, children were wont to sing any such words; nor could he call to mind that he had ever heard the like. Whereupon, he rose up, suppressing the torrent of his tears, and he interpreted the voice to be nothing less than a divine admonition, remembering that Saint Anthony was converted from the world to a life of retirement, by hearing an oracle of the gospel read. Therefore he returned in haste to the place where Alipius was sitting, for he had left there the book of Saint Paul’s epistles. He took it up, opened it, and read in silence the following words, on which he first cast his eyes: Not in revelling and drunkenness; not in chamberings and impurities; not in strifes and envy; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences. He would read no further, nor was there need; for at the end of these lines, as it were, by a new gleam of confidence and security streaming into his heart, all the darkness of his former hesitation was dispelled. He shut the book, having put a mark upon the place, and with a calm and serene countenance told Alipius what had passed in his soul. Alipius desired to see the passage he had read, and found the next words to be: He that is weak in faith, take unto you; which he applied to himself. Being of virtuous inclinations, and a sweet disposition, he readily joined his friend in his good resolution. They immediately went in, and told this good news to Saint Monica, who was transported with joy. She had followed her son into Italy, and came to him at Milan soon after he had abandoned the Manichean heresy and before he embraced the Catholic faith, for which happiness she continued still to pray, and for his perfect conversion from vice and irregularities till she saw both accomplished.
He formerly thought, under the tyranny of evil habits, “that without sensual pleasures life itself would seem to him no life but a pain.” And when he became a Catholic and first entertained thoughts of entering upon a virtuous course, he designed to take a wife, thinking it impossible for him otherwise to overcome the passion of lust. Alipius, who had never dragged the chain of that passion, wondered at his slavery; and from wondering was once in danger of desiring to make a trial, and to be drawn towards the same slavery; but the divine mercy preserved him. Saint Monica had provided a suitable match for her son, and the choice was extremely agreeable to him; but, when his heart was entirely converted to God, he resolved to embrace a state of perfect continency, and found by experience the truth of that maxim of Seneca: “It is not because things are difficult that we dare not aim at them; but they appear difficult because we have not courage to undertake them;” and that of two other heathens: “Who sets about, hath half performed the deed.” Our illustrious convert, pouring forth his heart in humble thanksgiving and holy jubilation before God, who had mercifully broken the chains of his slavery, cried out: “How sweet on a sudden was it become to me to be without the sweets of those toys! and what I was before so much afraid to lose, I now cast from me with joy; for thou hast expelled them from me who art the true and sovereign sweetness; thou expelledst them, and camest in thyself instead of them, sweeter than any pleasure whatever, but not to flesh and blood; brighter than any light whatever, but more interior than any secret; higher than any dignity whatever; but not to those who are high in their own conceit. Now was my mind free from the gnawing cares of the ambition of honour, of the acquisition of riches, and of weltering in pleasures; and my infant tongue began to lisp to thee, my Lord God, my true honour, my riches, and my salvation.” In the process of this saint’s wonderful conversion we cannot but admire the power of divine grace, that no one may despair; the victory indeed over evil habits is not purchased without much sorrow, pain, and contradiction to corrupt nature; yet let the sinner take courage, this conflict will at length be converted into happy liberty and joy; but let no sinner attempt so great a work with faint endeavours. It must cost many tears and a kind of martyrdom. How watchful and strenuous ought every one to be against the first spark of vice, which, if admitted, soon grows a devouring flame, and a dreadful tyranny. This company, this fond affection, this secret envy appears light at first, but nothing is so rapid or so violent as the progress of vice.
“He that once sins, like him that slides on ice,
Goes swiftly down the slippery ways of vice:
Though conscience checks him, yet those rubs gone o’er,
He slides on smoothly, and looks back no more.”
The conversion of Saint Austin happened in the year 386, the thirty-second of his age, in the month of August or September. At the same time he determined to quit his school and profession of teaching rhetoric; but deferred the execution of this resolution three weeks, till the vacation, which was in the time of the vintage. Then he retired to a country house at Cassiacum, near Milan, which his friend Verecundus (a professor of grammar in that city, who was then a heathen, but was baptized soon after) yielded to him and his friends; for he was accompanied in his retreat by his mother, Saint Monica, his brother, Navigius, his son, Adeodatus, Saint Alipius, his chief confident, Tregetius and Licentius, two of his scholars, and his cousins, Lastidianus and Rusticus. Here he wholly employed himself in prayer and study, which exercises he made admirably conducive to each other; for his study was a kind of prayer by the devotion of his mind therein. Here he strenuously laboured, by the practice of austere penance, by the strictest watchfulness over his heart and senses, and by most fervent and humble prayer, to subdue his passions, to purify his affections, to disengage them perfectly from the inordinate love of creatures, and to prepare himself for the grace of leading a new life in Christ, and becoming in him a new creature. He wept over the wounds and spiritual miseries of his soul, and he cried out with the greatest earnestness to his Saviour, begging him to stretch forth his merciful and omnipotent hand, and heal him. Against his domestic enemy he had recourse to God, praying: “My whole hope is in nothing else but in thy exceeding great mercy, O Lord, my God. Thou commandest me continency. Give me what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt. I know that no man can be continent, unless God give it.” He particularly prayed for purity of heart, and the most perfect divine love, confessing that he ought to devote to the love of God his whole strength and all his powers every moment of his life; he desired to redouble his earnestness in it, to repair, had it been possible, the precious time he had already lost. “Too late,” said he, “have I loved thee, O beauty so ancient, and so new! too late I have loved thee. Thou wast with me, and I was not with thee. Thou hast called, thou hast cried out, and hast pierced my deafness. Thou hast touched me, and I am all inflamed with the desire of thy embraces. He loveth thee less, who loveth anything else with thee, which he loveth not for thee. O love, which always burnest, and art never extinguished! true charity, my God, set me all on fire.”
This ardent lover of God, after his conversion, fulfilled the character of the true penitent in loving God so much the more fervently as more had been forgiven him, and as the divine mercy had raised him from greater miseries; on which account he is usually represented by painters with the symbol of a flaming heart. The foundation of this divine charity and of all other perfect virtues he laid in the most profound humility, the most sincere sentiments of which virtue his writings breathe. In the tenth book of his Confessions he mentions that he made it his principal care and study to watch against the snares of pride and vain-glory, which there is danger of a man’s seeking in the very contempt of vain-glory itself; he also laboured vigorously to restrain under the strictest government his tongue, his eyes, ears, and his other senses, especially that of the taste. Of this last he writes: “Drunkenness is far from me; thou wilt grant in thy mercy that it never approach me; but gluttony sometimes steals upon thy servant: thou wilt have mercy that it may be removed from me. A soldier of the heavenly camp said: I can do all things in him that strengthened me. Strengthen thou me, that I also may be able. I have heard another praying: Take thou from me the concupiscences of the belly. Who is he, O Lord, that is not sometimes carried a little out of the bounds of necessity? Whoever he be, he is great, let him magnify thy name; but I am not such a one, because I am a sinful man.” For this he earnestly implores the healing mercy of Christ. This saint had learned the maxim of the gospel and of Saint Paul, earnestly inculcated by Saint John Climacus, Saint Isidore, and all masters of a spiritual life, that all carnal passions are to be cut off, and the soul prepared to receive the impression of heavenly affections, by great abstinence and sobriety; for, “as a spring of water cut into many streams diffuses itself over a whole garden, and clothes every bed with green herbs, so if the appetite of gluttony spread itself through the veins of the heart, it will sow over it a thick grove of many lusts, and make the soul a dwelling-place of wild beasts,” says Saint Basil. Saint Austin had contracted in the world a pernicious habit of swearing. After his conversion, exhorting others to refrain from that horrible crime, he set before them his own example, in what manner he had overcome an execrable habit of that vice. “We also were formerly engaged,” says he, “in that most base and criminal custom: we once swore; but from the time that we began to serve God, and understood the heinous evil of that sin, we were seized with vehement fear, and by fear we restrained that inveterate custom. You say you do it by habit; but above all things watch over yourselves that you may never swear. A more inveterate custom requires the greater attention. The tongue is a slippery member, and is easily moved. Be then the more watchful to curb it. If you refrain to-day, you will find it more easy to refrain to-morrow. I speak from experience. If your victory be not complete to-morrow, it will at least be more easy by the custom of the former day. The mischief dies in three days. And we shall rejoice in our great fruit, and in our deliverance from such an evil.” In another sermon he says, “I know it is difficult to break your habit; it is what I found myself; but by fearing God we broke our custom of swearing. When I read his law, I was struck with fear, I strove against my custom, I invoked God my helper, and he afforded me his succour not to swear. Now nothing is more easy to me than not to swear.”
Saint Austin, in this retirement, usually after morning prayers, took a walk out with his friends, whilst Saint Monica took care of the housekeeping, though she had a great share in their domestic literary conferences. In them it was his main design to raise by degrees the thoughts of his friends in all their studies from sensible to spiritual things. How careful he was to teach them in all things to die to themselves, appears from the following instance: In a disputation, Trigetius advanced something that did him no honour, and he desired that it might not be committed to writing. Licentius, his antagonist, insisted that it ought to be recorded as a monument of his victory. Saint Austin burst into a flood of tears to see them still enslaved to a petty passion of vanity, and reproved them for their fault, praying that God would heal this wound of their hearts. Whereupon the two youths entreated that the whole contest should be left on record, each desiring this for the sake of his own confusion. Saint Austin testifies, that the love of riches or honours seemed then quite extinguished in his breast: that he was never tempted to desire any food which he had interdicted himself, but feared intemperance sometimes in what he ate: that he was determined to shun above all things the company of women: nevertheless he still felt temptations to that shameful passion, to which he had been so long enslaved; but as often as they began to molest him, he was covered with extreme confusion at himself, shed abundance of tears, and cast himself earnestly into the arms of God, begging Him to heal him.
While he was employing himself in his solitude in the exercises of holy penance and prayer, God, as he tells us, “by his grace brought down the pride of his spirit, and laid low the lofty mountains of his vain thoughts, by bringing him, daily to a greater sense of that misery and bondage from which he was delivered.” He read the psalms of David with wonderful devotion, and the words contained in them were like fiery darts, which first gave healthful wounds to his soul, and then communicated to it a divine sweetness, and a healing virtue. By these affectionate words he was influenced with the divine love, and he burned with a desire of reciting them if he could, all the world over, to abate the swelling pride of mankind. He was particularly affected with the fourth psalm Cum Invocarem, of which he has given us a very pious paraphrase in his Confessions; and he could not but censure the Manichees as blind and miserable, who deprived themselves of the advantages of those divine hymns. Deplorable, in like manner, is the misfortune of those who repeat these moving acts of adoration, love, thanksgiving, and praise, without the least attention to God, and who often have in their hearts sentiments