The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey with an Introduction by Arthur Symons)

By Saint Augustine

Written between 397 and 400 A.D., “The Confessions of Saint Augustine” is thought to be the first autobiography in Western civilization and is considered by many to be one of the most important religious works of all time. While not a complete account of Augustine’s life, for Augustine wrote “Confessions” in his early forties and would live well into his seventies, it is one of the most complete first-hand accounts of anyone’s life from the fourth or fifth century, in which the author outlines the sins of his youth and conversion to Christianity. “The Confessions” tells of its author’s upbringing in Algeria, his place at the Imperial court of Milan, his struggle to overcome his sexual desires, and the ultimate dedication of his life to Christ and Christian ways. “The Confessions” are not simply a recount of the author’s life but a true exploration of what it is to be Christian and the struggles that one must overcome in order to find Christ and live a more pious life. A pioneering work of autobiography, “The Confessions” remains one of the most important works of spiritual devotion ever written. This edition follows the translation of Edward Bouverie Pusey and includes an introduction by Arthur Symons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Nov 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781420951974

Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine (354-430) was a Catholic theologian, philosopher, and writer. Born to a Catholic mother and pagan father—Berbers living in Numidia, Roman North Africa (modern day Algeria)—Augustine’s lifelong commitment to faith and deeply personal writings make him an important figure for religion, literature, and Western philosophy. He is considered influential for developing the Catholic doctrines of original sin and predestination, though he also made contributions to philosophy that extend beyond religion, including general ethics, just war theory, and the concept of free will. Augustine is also recognized today as an early and significant memoirist and autobiographer, adapting these literary forms in order to blend religious teaching with personal stories and anecdotes.

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE CONFESSIONS OF

SAINT AUGUSTINE

By SAINT AUGUSTINE

Translated by EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY

Preface by ALICE MEYNELL

Introduction by ARTHUR SYMONS

The Confessions of Saint Augustine

By Saint Agustine

Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey

Preface by Alice Meynell

Introduction by Arthur Symons

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5196-7

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5197-4

This edition copyright © 2015. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: St. Augustine in his Cell, c. 1480 (fresco) (detail of 29143), Botticelli, Sandro (Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi) (1444/5-1510) / Ognissanti, Florence, Italy / Bridgeman Images.

Please visit www.digireads.com

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Book I

Book II

Book III

Book IV

Book V

Book VI

Book VII

Book VIII

Book IX

Book X

Book XI

Book XII

Book XIII

Preface

The great men of the race are they who are chiefly capable of a great sincerity. Other men may be entirely sincere, but the entire sincerity of great natures is of larger importance; of them it may be said that they are not relatively but absolutely and positively more sincere than the rest, And in nothing else, obviously, is a great sincerity so momentous as in religion. St. Augustine, St. Francis, Pascal have taken the narrowest way into self-knowledge, and have entered in at the straightest gate. No illusion, no substitute for experience, no substitute for life, no excuse against grief, no exaggeration, no self-sparing, no tradition, is able to cling to the man so secretly despoiled—despoiled of all except the difficult truth; but especially despoiled, St. Francis of hampering material circumstance, Pascal of the fictions of words, St. Augustine of the detaining tenderness of secondary loves. It is true that the intellectual imagination was also a barrier in his way, so that he needed to put it also to silence, before he was able to conceive the new idea of Divinity; but he, undeceived, discovered the turning aside, the pausing, of love to have been the thing that chiefly kept him for a while from the First and Only Fair. Nay, a company of other hindrances there were: for example, the partial, or heretical faith—the faith of a sect which during his earlier years offered him the little-realised idea of God—and much the idea of the modern world, and much the conception of the modern mind—against which he had the candor to revolt. In bereavement, he tells us, he had tried to persuade his soul to find consolation in God, but his soul had replied that she could not, for the friend she had lost, being a man, was better than this God. But more than heresy, more than a will unsacrificed, more than any other cause of delay in the ‘conversion’ of Augustine was the love astray that is assuredly, far more than the self-love involved in ambition, the infirmity of noble minds. St. Augustine, thinker, reasoner, dialectician, whose intellectual encounters left him a Father of the Church, is eminently the Saint of love. He loved love first and last. Feeling love, and in search of that which he should love, he found it ultimately to be love, and closed in the end with his early desire.

On the delays of that secondary tenderness he has no mercy in his self-accusations; but it does not appear that the young Augustine was a random libertine; he loved his companion and his child; his briefer bond with another was undertaken less in pleasure than in despair. And the chief evil, perhaps, was in the mere delay that by means of sexual love beset the soul created for love immediate and direct. Stripped of this, St. Augustine stood alone with the end of his search, alone in the great sincerity, one of the greatest sincerities in the history of the human race.

Aurelius Augustinus, son of Patricius and of Monica, was born in A.D. 354 at Tagaste in Numidia, was sent to school at Madaura, and afterwards at Carthage, was liberally educated, and remaining—in that age of the encounter of paganism and Christianity—albeit a student of theology, unbaptized, joined the sect of the Manichaeans in search of a solution of the problem of the origin and existence of evil. The solution he found there was one that, attempting to account for all, stopped short of the final philosophy. Through the years of error and of lawless living, Augustine was mourned for by his mother, that Monica who won the name and grade of Saint by the long martyrdom of her wounded maternity. She seemed to herself to have brought a man into the world with the doom of reprobation before him. ‘The son of so many tears would not perish,’ said a bishop before whom she stood, as she lived, a fountain of tears. Nor did she die until her child had spoken with Ambrose at Milan, and after a long and difficult controversy with his own will, his own wish, and the bonds of the fragmentary system wherein he had lingered, had been baptized in 387, and his young son with him. In the Milanese church, from the doors of which St. Ambrose turned away an emperor of the West, stained with the crime of an Asian massacre, Augustine and Ambrose composed, in alternate verses, the first Te Deum. From that day the North African student became a Doctor of the Church Catholic. Monica’s tears, the reading of Plato and the Platonists (Augustine had been in his boyhood negligent of Greek, and he read these authors in a translation), and what he found to be the ignorance of his Manichaean teachers, had their various influences and persuasions, to one unalterable event. Augustine had produced a treatise ‘On the Beautiful and the Apt’ in the days before his conversion; in the years that followed he wrote the series of works that are nothing less than the foundation of Western theology. The treatises ‘Contra Academicos,’ ‘De Immortalitate Animas,’ De Ordine,’ written at Milan; ‘De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholics,’ ‘De Libero Arbitrio,’ ‘De Quantitate Animae,’ and a treatise against the Manichaeans, written in Rome, were the first fruits of this imperishable work of literature. He returned to Tagaste, where he sold what remained of his inheritance from his father, for the benefit of the poor, and remained for some time in solitude, composing amid his devotions the treatises ‘De Genesi contra Manichaeos,’ ‘De Musica,’ ‘De Magistro,’ ‘De Vera Religione.’ In 391 he was ordained priest, and a few years later, after the composition of the tract ‘De Utilitate Credendi,’ of two more essays against the Manichaeans, and of a discourse upon the Creed, he was consecrated Bishop of Hippo, a see he held, despite persuasions to accept a more conspicuous bishopric, until his death on the 28th of August 430. He wrote against the Donatist and Pelagian heresies, but always with gentleness, and often with affection, of the men whom he opposed. His monumental and fully representative works are the ‘Confessions,’ the ‘Retractations,’ and the ‘City of God.’ This last and the Confessions are not only great classics, but great books of human experience, and have been as much loved by the multitude as studied by the learned. Two of his words are familiar in the household of every house of life—they are part of every man's memory:—

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem amans amare;

and

Fecisti nos ad Te, et irrequietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te.

ALICE MEYNELL

1900.

Introduction

The Confessions of St. Augustine are the first autobiography, and they have this to distinguish them from all other autobiographies, that they are addressed directly to God. Rousseau’s unburdening of himself is the last, most effectual manifestation of that nervous, defiant consciousness of other people which haunted him all his life. He felt that all the men and women whom he passed on his way through the world were at watch upon him, and mostly with no very favourable intentions. The exasperation of all those eyes fixed upon him, the absorbing, the protesting self-consciousness which they called forth in him, drove him, in spite of himself, to set about explaining himself to other people, to the world in general. His anxiety to explain, not to justify, himself was after all a kind of cowardice before his own conscience. He felt the silent voices within him too acutely to keep silence. Cellini wrote his autobiography because he heard within him such trumpeting voices of praise, exultation, and the supreme satisfaction of a violent man who has conceived himself to be always in the right, that it shocked him to think of going down into his grave without having made the whole world hear those voices. He hurls at you this book of his own deeds that it may smite you into acquiescent admiration. Casanova, at the end of a long life in which he had tasted all the forbidden fruits of the earth, with a simplicity of pleasure in which the sense of their being forbidden was only the least of their abounding flavors, looked back upon his past self with a slightly pathetic admiration, and set himself to go all over those successful adventures, in love and in other arts, firstly, in order that he might be amused by recalling them, and then because he thought the record would do him credit. He neither intrudes himself as a model, nor acknowledges that he was very often in the wrong. Always passionate after sensations, and for their own sake, the writing of an autobiography was the last, almost active, sensation that was left to him, and he accepted it energetically.

Probably St. Augustine first conceived of the writing of an autobiography as a kind of penance, which might be fruitful also to others. By its form it challenges the slight difficulty that it appears to be telling God what God knew already. But that is the difficulty which every prayer also challenges. To those we love, are we not fond of telling many things about ourselves which they know already? A prayer, such confessions as these, are addressed to God by one of those subterfuges by which it is necessary to approach the unseen and infinite, under at least a disguise of mortality. And the whole book, as no other such book has ever been, is lyrical. This prose, so simple, so familiar, has in it the exaltation of poetry. It can pass, without a change of tone, from the boy’s stealing of pears: If aught of those pears came within my mouth, what sweetened it was the sin; to a tender human affection: And now he lives in Abraham's bosom: whatever that be which is signified by that bosom, there lives my Nebridius, my sweet friend; and from that to the saint’s rare, last ecstasy: And sometimes Thou admittedst me to an affection, very unusual, in my inmost soul, rising to a strange sweetness, which if it were perfected in me, I know not what in it would not belong to the life to come. And even self-analysis, of which there is so much, becoming at times a kind of mathematics, even those metaphysical subtleties which seem to sharpen thought upon thought to an almost invisible fineness of edge, become also lyrical, inter-penetrated as they are with this sense of the divine.

To St. Augustine all life is seen only in its relation to the divine; looked at from any other side, it has no meaning, and, looked at even with this light upon it, is but for the most part seen as a blundering in the dark, a wandering from the right path. In so far as it is natural, it is evil. In so far as it is corrected by divine grace, it leaves the human actors in it without merit; since all virtue is God’s, though all vice is man’s.

This conception of life is certainly valuable in giving harmony to the book, presenting as it does a sort of background. It brings with it a very impressive kind of symbolism into its record of actual facts, to all of which it gives a value, not in themselves, if you please to put it so, or, perhaps more properly, their essential value. When nothing which happens, happens except under God’s direct responsibility, when nothing is said which is not one of your lines in the drama which is being played, not so much by as through you, there can be no exteriorities, nothing can be trivial, in a record of life so conceived. And this point of view also helps the writer to keep all his details in proportion; the autobiographer’s usual fault, artistically at least, being an inordinate valuation of small concerns, because they happened to him. To St. Augustine, while not the smallest human event is without significance, in its relation to eternity, not the greatest human event is of importance, in its relation to time; and his own share in it would but induce a special, it may seem an exaggerated, humility on his part. Thus, speaking of his early studies, his triumphs in them, not without a certain naïveté: Whatever was written, either in rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty or any instruction, I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my God; because both quickness of understanding and acuteness in discerning is Thy gift. Or, again, speaking of the youthful excellences (excellently hadst Thou made him) of that son who was the son of his beloved mistress: I had no part in that boy, but the sin.

Intellectual pride, one sees in him indeed, at all times, by the very force with which it is repressed into humility; and, in all that relates to that mistress, in the famous cry: Give me chastity, but not yet! in all those insurgent memories of these various and shadowy loves, we see the force of the flesh, in one who lived always with so passionate a life, alike of the spirit and the senses. Now, recalling what was sinful in him, in his confessions to God, he is reluctant to allow any value to the most honourable of human sentiments, to so much as forgive the most estimable of human weaknesses. And now, Lord, in writing I confess it unto Thee. Read it who will, and interpret it how he will: and if any finds sin therein, that I wept my mother for a small portion of an hour (the mother who for the time was dead to mine eyes, who had for many years wept for me that I might live in Thine eyes), let him not deride me; but rather, if he be one of large charity, let him weep for himself for my sins unto Thee, the Father of all the brethren of Thy Christ. And yet it is of this mother that he writes his most tender, his most beautiful pages. The day was now approaching whereon she was to depart this life (which day Thou well knewest, we knew not), it came to pass, Thyself, as I believe, by Thy secret ways so ordering it, that she and I stood alone, leaning in a certain window, which looked into the garden of the house where we now lay, at Ostia . . . it is not often that memory, in him, is so careful of the images of earth, and water, and air, as to call up these delicate pictures. They too had become for him among the desirable things which are to be renounced for a more desirable thing.

That sense of the divine in life, and specially of the miracles which happen a certain number of times in every existence, the moments which alone count in the soul’s summing-up of itself, St. Augustine has rendered with such significance, with such an absolute wiping out from the memory of everything else, just because he has come to that, it might seem, somewhat arid point of spiritual ascent. That famous moment of the Tolle, lege: I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig-tree, giving full vent to my tears . . . when lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, ‘Take up and read, take up and read’; the Bishop's word to Monnica (as if it had sounded from heaven), It is not possible that the son of those tears should perish; the beggar-man, joking and joyous, in the streets of Milan: it is by these, apparently trifling, these all-significant, moments that his narrative moves, with a more reticent and effective symbolism than any other narrative known to me. They are the moments in which the soul has really lived, or has really seen; and the rest of life may well be a blindness and a troubled coming and going.

I said that the height from which St Augustine apprehends these truths may seem a somewhat arid one. That is perhaps only because it is nearer the sky, more directly bathed in what he calls, beautifully, this queen of colours, the light. There is a passage in the tenth book which may almost be called a kind of aesthetics. They are aesthetics indeed of renunciation, but a renunciation of the many beauties for the one Beauty, which shall contain as well as eclipse them; because those beautiful patterns which through men’s souls are conveyed into their cunning hands, come from that Beauty, which is above our souls. And it is not a renunciation by one who had never enjoyed what he renounces, or who feels himself, even now, quite safe from certain forms of its seduction. He is troubled especially by the fear that those melodies which Thy words breathe soul into, when sung with a sweet and attuned voice, may come to move him more with the voice than with the words sung. Yet how graciously he speaks of music, allowing that the several affections of our spirit, by a sweet variety, have their own proper measures in the voice and singing, by some hidden correspondence wherewith they are stirred up. It is precisely because he feels so intimately the beauty of all things human, though it were but a dog coursing in the field, a lizard catching flies, that he desires to pass through these to that passionate contemplation which is the desire of all seekers after the absolute, and which for him is God. He asks of all the powers of the earth: My questioning them, was my thoughts on them; and their form of beauty gave the answer. And by how concrete a series of images does he strive to express the inexpressible, in that passage of pure poetry on the love of God! But what do I love, when I love thee? not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement, when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, embracement of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain, and there soundeth what time beareth not away, and there smelleth what breathing disperseth not, and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not, and there clingeth what satiety divorceth not. This is it which I love when I love my God.

Mentioning in his confessions only such things as he conceives to be of import to God, it happens, naturally, that St Augustine leaves unsaid many things that would have interested most men, perhaps more. What, then, have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions—as if they could heal my infirmities,—a race curious to know the lives of others, slothful to amend their own? Finding, indeed, many significant mentions of things and books and persons, Faustus the Manichee, the Hortensius of Cicero, the theatre, we shall find little pasture here for our antiquarian, our purely curious, researches. We shall not even find all that we might care to know, in St. Augustine himself, of the surface of the mind’s action, which we call character, or the surface emotions, which we call temperament. Here is a soul, one of the supreme souls of humanity, speaking directly to that supreme soul which it has apprehended outside humanity. Be sure that, if it forgets many things which you, who overhear, would like it to have remembered, it will remember everything which it is important to remember, everything which the recording angel, who is the soul’s finer criticism of itself, has already inscribed in the book of the last judgment.

ARTHUR SYMONS

1913.

Book I

Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and, again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? for who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? for he that knoweth Thee not, may call on Thee as other than Thou art. Or, is it rather, that we call on Thee that we may know Thee? but how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher? and they that seek the Lord shall praise Him: for they that seek shall find Him, and they that find shall praise Him. I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee; and will call on Thee, believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My faith, Lord, shall call on Thee, which Thou hast given me, wherewith Thou hast inspired me, through the Incarnation of Thy Son, through the ministry of the Preacher.

And how shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord, since, when I call for Him, I shall be calling Him to myself? and what room is there within me, whither my God can come into me? whither can God come into me, God who made heaven and earth? is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught in me that can contain Thee? do then heaven and earth, which Thou hast made, and wherein Thou hast made me, contain Thee? or, because nothing which exists could exist without Thee, doth therefore whatever exists contain Thee? Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldest enter into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me? Why? because I am not gone down in hell, and yet Thou art there also. For if I go down into hell, Thou art there. I could not be then, O my God, could not be at all, wert Thou not in me; or, rather, unless I were in Thee, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things? Even so, Lord, even so. Whither do I call Thee, since I am in Thee? or whence canst Thou enter into me? for whither can I go beyond heaven and earth, that thence my God should come into me, who hath said, I fill the heaven and the earth.

Do the heaven and earth then contain Thee, since Thou fillest them? or dost Thou fill them and yet overflow, since they do not contain Thee? And whither, when the heaven and the earth are filled, pourest Thou forth the remainder of Thyself? or hast Thou no need that aught contain Thee, who containest all things, since what Thou fillest Thou fillest by containing it? for the vessels which Thou fillest uphold Thee not, since, though they were broken, Thou wert not poured out. And when Thou art poured out on us, Thou art not cast down, but Thou upliftest us; Thou art not dissipated, but Thou gatherest us. But Thou who fillest all things, fillest Thou them with Thy whole self? or, since all things cannot contain Thee wholly, do they contain part of Thee? and all at once the same part? or each its own part, the greater more, the smaller less? And is, then one part of Thee greater, another less? or, art Thou wholly every where, while nothing contains Thee wholly?

What art Thou then, my God? what, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong, stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud, and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet nothing lacking; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what had I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not, since mute are even the most eloquent.

Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good! What art Thou to me? In Thy pity, teach me to utter it. Or what am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and, if I give it not, art wroth with me, and threatenest me with grievous woes? Is it then a slight woe to love Thee not? Oh! for Thy mercies’ sake, tell me, O Lord my God, what Thou art unto me. Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. So speak, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, my heart is before Thee; open Thou the ears thereof, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. After this voice let me haste, and take hold on Thee. Hide not Thy face from me. Let me die—lest I die—only let me see Thy face.

Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak. Lord, Thou knowest. Have I not confessed against myself my transgressions unto Thee, and Thou, my God, hast forgiven the iniquity of my heart? I contend not in judgment with Thee, who art the truth; I fear to deceive myself; lest mine iniquity lie unto itself. Therefore I contend not in judgment with Thee; for if Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall abide it?

Yet suffer me to speak unto Thy mercy, me, dust and ashes. Yet suffer me to speak, since I speak to Thy mercy, and not to scornful man. Thou too, perhaps, despisest me, yet wilt Thou return and have compassion upon me. For what would I say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came into this dying life (shall I call it?) or living death. Then immediately did the comforts of Thy compassion take me up, as I heard (for I remember it not) from the parents of my flesh, out of whose substance Thou didst sometime fashion me. Thus there received me the comforts of woman’s milk. For neither my mother nor my nurses stored their own breasts for me; but Thou didst bestow the food of my infancy through them, according to Thine ordinance, whereby Thou distributest Thy riches through the hidden springs of all things. Thou also gavest me to desire no more than Thou gavest; and to my nurses willingly to give me what Thou gavest them. For they, with a heaven-taught affection, willingly gave me what they abounded with from Thee. For this my good from them, was good for them. Nor, indeed, from them was it, but through them; for from Thee, O God, are all good things, and from my God is all my health. This I since learned, Thou, through these Thy gifts, within me and without, proclaiming Thyself unto me. For then I knew but to suck; to repose in what pleased, and cry at what offended my flesh; nothing more.

Afterwards I began to smile; first in sleep, then waking: for so it was told me of myself, and I believed it; for we see the like in other infants, though of myself I remember it not. Thus, little by little, I became conscious where I was; and to have a wish to express my wishes to those who could content them, and I could not; for the wishes were within me, and they without; nor could they by any sense of theirs enter within my spirit. So I flung about at random limbs and voice, making the few signs I could, and such as I could, like, though in truth very little like, what I wished. And when I was not presently obeyed (my wishes being hurtful or unintelligible), then I was indignant with my elders for not submitting to me, with those owing me no service, for not serving me; and avenged myself on them by tears. Such have I learnt infants to be from observing them; and that I was myself such, they, all unconscious, have shown me better than my nurses who knew it.

And, lo! my infancy died long since, and I live. But Thou, Lord, who for ever livest, and in whom nothing dies: for before the foundation of the worlds, and before all that can be called before, Thou art, and art God and Lord of all which Thou hast created: in Thee abide, fixed for ever, the first causes of all things unabiding; and of all things changeable, the springs abide in Thee unchangeable: and in Thee live the eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal. Say, Lord, to me, Thy suppliant; say, all-pitying, to me, Thy pitiable one; say, did my infancy succeed another age of mine that died before it? was it that which I spent within my mother’s womb? for of that I have heard somewhat, and have myself seen women with child? and what before that life again, O God my joy, was I any where or any body? For this have I none to tell me, neither father nor mother, nor experience of others, nor mine own memory. Dost Thou mock me for asking this, and bid me praise Thee and acknowledge Thee, for that I do know?

I acknowledge Thee, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise Thee for my first rudiments of being, and my infancy, whereof I remember nothing; for Thou hast appointed that man should from others guess much as to himself; and believe much on the strength of weak females. Even then I had being and life, and (at my infancy’s close) I could seek for signs whereby to make known to others my sensations. Whence could such a being be, save from Thee, Lord? Shall any be his own artificer? or can there elsewhere be derived any vein, which may stream essence and life into us, save from thee, O Lord, in whom essence and life are one? for Thou Thyself art supremely Essence and Life. For Thou art most high, and art not changed, neither in Thee doth to-day come to a close; yet in Thee doth it come to a close; because all such things also are in Thee. For they had no way to pass away, unless Thou upheldest them. And since Thy years fail not, Thy years are one to-day. How many of ours and our fathers’ years have flowed away through Thy to-day, and from it received the measure and the mould of such being as they had; and still others shall flow away, and so receive the mould of their degree of being. But Thou art still the same, and all things of tomorrow, and all beyond, and all of yesterday, and all behind it, Thou hast done to-day. What is it to me, though any comprehend not this? Let him also rejoice and say, What thing is this? Let him rejoice even thus! and be content rather by not discovering to discover Thee, than by discovering not to discover Thee.

Hear, O God. Alas, for man’s sin! So saith man, and Thou pitiest him; for Thou madest him, but sin in him Thou madest not. Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? for in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth. Who remindeth me? doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I remember not? What then was my sin? was it that I hung upon the breast and cried? for should I now so do for food suitable to my age, justly should I be laughed at and reproved. What I then did was worthy reproof; but

Reviews for The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey with an Introduction by Arthur Symons)

[judithrs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Confessions. Saint Augustine. 2d Translated by Frank Sheed. 1992. And I Burned for your Peace; Augustine’s Confessions Unpacked. Peter Kreeft. 2016. Confessions was a fall sections for our great books club, and I just finished it! Not that I it should have taken me this long; I just read most of the books listed above as I read a few pages in Confessions two or three times a week until I finished it. It is a beautiful book, and I am so glad that I read it. To be honest, I am not sure I would have finished it had I not read Kreeft’s book along with it. He certainly did a good job of explaining St. Augustine. It was sort of like reading the Bible. I really enjoyed most of it, but Augustine does belabor the points he makes! He takes a long time to say anything. This is a spiritual autobiography, not a typical autobiography. Anyone interested in early Christian thought would do well to read this. I expect I will return to read some of the many parts I underlined

[alexanme-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Essential medieval/Christian philosophy.

[georgee53-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the great works in philosophy and religion.

[janemarieprice · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a master work of religious philosophy. This was one of the first things I read which made me understand religion in the deeper sense.

[empress8411 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I know this is a "great" work of Christianity because I was told it was. But it did nothing for me. It seemed jumbled and erratic and hard to understand, despite the use of simple, easy language. It was more stream-of-consciousness that I excepted. I didn't enjoy reading about Augustine's life and struggles with sin. He was honest and that's rare from someone who because famous for their faith. I think this book can make a huge difference in many people's hearts - but for me, it was just not what I prefer to read. It was a bit too sentimental and full of angst for my rational tastes.

[lassiter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If anyone struggles with desires within themselves and wonders why the struggle and if it can be overcome they need to read Confessions. The struggle has never changed and Augustine had to fight through his passions and his intellect to find trust and relief in Christ.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A marvelous autobiography of a Church Father. How he coped with avoiding the "call" to God. He sought the truth in pganism, then Aristotelian philosophy, then Manichaeism. All the while relishing a sinner's life. Then he visited Milan, called upon Ambrose and began his conversion to Christianity. He portrays himself, warts and all, living with a mistress, his quest for easy living and money, only to be confronted by a voice telling him to read the Bible. It changes his life. He converts. He pursues Catholicism with devotion and eventually finds himself the Bishop of Hippo, ministering to the poor of all faiths. Quite a man.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Considering that the style of Augie's work is completely and utterly impenetrable, this is actually a pretty decent read. Just come to it expecting circularity, meditation, rapturous theology and self-flagellation, and you'll come away impressed.
Don't expect anything linear, and you'll be all the more impressed when he ends up, every now and then, out-Aristotling Aristotle with arguments of the (x-->y)&(y-->z)&(z-->p)&(p-->q); ~x is absurd; therefore q variety.
Don't expect any modern 'you are a unique and special snowflake and your desires are good it's just that your parents/society/upbringing/schoolfriends/economic earning power have stunted you' self-help guff. It'd be nice to read someone more contemporary who's willing to admit that people do things wrong, all the time, and should feel really shitty for doing wrong things.
Don't expect Aquinas. This is the hardest bit for me; if someone's going to talk about God I prefer that they be coldly logical about it. Augie goes more for the erotic allegory, self-abasement in the face of the overwhelming eternal kind of thing. No thanks.
Finally, be aware that you'll need to think long and hard about what he says and why he says it when he does. Books I-IX are the ones you'll read as autobiography, and books X-XIII will seem like a slog. But it's all autobiography. Sadly for Augie, he doesn't make it easy for us to value the stuff he wants to convince us to value, which is the philosophy and theology of the later books. The structure, as far as I can tell, is to show us first how he got to believing that it was possible for him to even begin thinking about God (that's I-IX). X-XIII shows us how he goes about thinking about God, moving from the external world, to the human self in X and a bit of XI, to the whole of creation in XI and XII, to God himself in XIII. I have no idea if this is what he had in mind, but it roughly works out. That's all very intellectually stimulating, but it's still way more fun to read about his peccadilloes and everyday life in the fourth century.

[endersreads · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is very dear to me. I read "Confessions" in a very difficult personal time and quickly became overwhelmed by Augustines sincerity, intellect, and love for The Immutable Light. Augustine presents us with a very interesting time period in as where Christianity and Roman Paganism lie in juxtaposition. Besides Augustine's personal confessions, I enjoyed his examination of Genesis and his hefty discourse on time, or perhaps I should say the lack of the past and future. Rather than prattle on in the present, which has become past, I will urge you, reader, to introduce yourself to an author you most assuredly will hold very close to your heart.

[deborahjade · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book has been one of the slowest reads so far this year and took around 41 days to finish. My main struggle was with the language the book was written it. The underlying story was interesting, but there were so many extra words around everything. Especially in the first books, Augustine is constantly referencing back and forward between the past and the present and the relationship between his past actions and God. He regrets choices and actions that he took, but acknowledges that God was present in them and worked through them.
The more I read, the more the underlying story of Augustine's journey became clear. It showed that his was a slow meandering journey to finding God.
His mother, Monnica, is one of the main characters in the book, who is constantly praying to God to save her son. And her prayer is answered before her death, albeit not by many years.
The last chapter ended by tying up the experience with an honest look at how Augustine was living in the present. He struggled with wanting to follow God in his heart, but also wanting to follow his own wills/passions. It is an encouraging insight into the life of such a well-known, influential Christian theologian and philosopher showing that he never attained perfection, but was reassuringly human.

[carka_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read the whole thing as part of my church history course. It probably meant more to me reading it as an adult than it would have if I read it all the way through when I bought it in high school. A reminder that God's love is deeper than anything we can imagine.

[steve777_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Timeless autobiography showing how the Spirit of Christ drew this Church father to Himself.

[mbmackay · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Written in the 4th century by an early intellectual christian who is famous (to me anyway) for his prayer - "Lord grant me chastity, but not yet"!. The book is in the form of an autobiography, interspersed with lots and lots of beseeching of the lord. The biography is interesting, and all the beseeching has a strong echo in the formulaic rants of the TV preachers. The book ends with some ponderings - on memory, and on the creation. Augustine believes god made the world, but he has some interesting questions about exactly how this was done. I couldn't help wondering, if Augustine was alive now, when there are much better explanations, whether he wouldn't be in the Richard Dawkins' camp. Read February 2009

[maryh10000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Actually brings up the idea that some parts of the bible are to be understood metaphorically, rather than literally. Including Genesis. I always have big trouble with the way Augustine just "sent away" his mistress when he converted. Lots of agonizing over how much it hurt him, but not much on how it affected her. Seems to me he should have married her.

[ted_newell-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fabulous feast. Who are you? God only knows, says Augustine reverently.

[femmebibliophile37 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really felt my soul physically grow as I read this book.

[sedeara · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well, I'm finished with this book at last!I originally became interested in reading Confessions when I saw a special twelve years ago about the beginnings of Christianity, because I thought "Confessions" sounded like a juicy book. It's really not juicy at all, so it's a good thing I approached it interested in theology and not scandal by the time I finally got around to reading it. This time around, I mainly felt like it was important for me to read firsthand the philosophy that is so much a basis of Catholic thought.Like most books written in the middle ages, St. Augustine's would have benefited from a good editor. There were a lot of times where I felt he repeated himself, which is fine for a spiritual seeker's personal musings, but a bit annoying for an outside reader hundreds of years later. And even though he wrote his Confessions both to strengthen his understanding/relationship with God and to further the same for others, a lot of it really did feel like naval-gazing. Still, I found myself appreciating a LOT of Augustine's theology, such as his insistence that people could come to diverse interpretations of Scripture without any of them being "wrong" (take that, fundamentalists!). Indeed, Augustine's perception of Christianity seems a lot more open than the Catholic Church of today would lead you to believe, although the hierarchy HAS kept his puritan perceptions of sexuality fully intact. Thank God for that.

[quaintlittlehead · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The "Confessions" of Saint Augustine is a hard work to pin down--part conversion story, part apologetics text, part philosophical treatise, part Bible commentary. It is also a hard work to read. There are many points of interest within the text, but it is not something you just read straight through without a lot of stopping and thinking, and preferably some supplemental research. There were many times reading the book that I felt that my time would be better spent just reading hours of the Bible, and that I was trying to force myself to grapple with a seminary-level text without the prerequisite educational background. This is a vitally significant work in Christian history, to be sure; it lays out fundamental arguments against the Manichaeans, has been looked to by the Roman Catholic church in support of purgatory, and even influenced the philosophical writings of Descartes. However, this wide-ranging history is far beyond the scope of the book itself, and it almost needs its own commentary to be understood by the layperson. The Barnes and Noble edition contains a historical timeline, an introduction, endnotes, a brief essay on the Confessions' influence on later works (which I found to be the most helpful supplemental piece in the book and wish I had read it before the text), a selection of famous quotes responding to the text, and a few critical questions to consider in thinking about the work.

[p_s_patrick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Augustine's Confessions are his biography, and they contain a lot of his theological and philosophical thoughts, as well details of his surprisingly interesting life. He didn't become a Christian until later in life, first being a Manichean, an interesting gnostic religion which died out in the middle ages. He writes about the bad things he did, how he regrets them, and speculates on psychological reasons for human behavior.Augustine was fairly well educated, and the chapters where he muses over problems of time and memory are quite thought provoking. The book is notable for the frankness of the author, his perceptiveness, and his variety of internal struggles. The literary impact of this book has also been huge; as the reader progresses numerous phrases will stand out, either because they have entered the common idiom, or because there is something very poetical captured in them. This book is notable for so many reasons.

[andrewlovesoldbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Has been called the greatest autobiography of all time.Exceedingly eloquent; the entire book is a prayer which reflects on the author's life and the work of God's grace within it.

[audacity88_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Powerful in its honesty, but also hard for me as a nonbeliever to read. The constant reference to God occurs not on the scale of once every page, but more like every other sentence. The effect is to make me skeptical of even the best parts, such as the brilliant discussion of the nature of time and the excruciatingly honest effort to understand the theft of the pears, when they end up being folded into Augustine's religious narrative. Yet the passion of Augustine's thought and the force of his writing is impossible to deny and those insights that do hold relevance beyond the Christian are presented powerfully here.

[george1295 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The son of a pagan father, who insisted on his education, and a Christian mother, who continued to pray for his salvation, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between the conflicting religions and philosophical world views of his time. His Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recount how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from the licentious lifestyle and vagaries of his youth, to become a staunch advocate of Christianity and one of its most influential thinkers, writers and advocates. A remarkably honest and revealing spiritual autobiography, the Confessions also address fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of Christianity today.

[elfortunawe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I began reading this once years ago, but it failed to engage me and I put it aside. When I started again I couldn't understand my previous lack of interest. The work ranges from philosophical speculation to personal memoir, and each kind has it's appeal. I was surprised by how must variety of belief and opinion late antiquity held on so many topics. Some of the debates and issues Augustine describes sound shockingly contemporary, though put in different terms. The passages covering Augustine's personal life can be poignant, especially those concerning death.

The scholarly consensus is that the Confessions was meant to be a preamble to a longer work: a detailed exegesis of the entirety of Christian scripture. The last three books cover the first chapter of Genesis, with careful attention given to an allegorical interpretation of the creation story. This is apparently as far Augustine ever got, thus adding to the long tradition of great, unfinished masterpieces.

[agentjade · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Gorgeously written, though I suppose Latin generally translates into very lovely prose. I loved the introspective wanderings into the human consciousness, and recommend the book to anyone, especially one who puts the saints on an unattainable pedestal--the holy have never seemed so human.

[nesum_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful book that at once balances a true confession of a life without God with the awe and wonder of knowing and seeking the Almighty. Augustine masterfully recognizes God's hand in every part of his life, and he makes his reader want to seek that hand as well. A masterpiece in both a religious and literary sense.

[sprite_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What can I even say about this book? I am standing too close to say anything sensible. Fortunately other people have written plenty of actual reviews.Memo to future me: the quote you're (I'm) usually looking for is book 10, chapter 36, first paragraph. "You know how greatly you have already changed me, you who first healed me from the passion for self-vindication, [...] you who subdued my pride by your fear and tamed my neck to your yoke? Now I bear that yoke, and it is light upon me, for this you have promised, and thus have you made it be. Truly, it was this but I did not know it when I was afraid to submit to it."

[miquixote · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Augustine's 'efficacious grace' inspired Reformation theologians such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Augustine taught that Adam's guilt, as transmitted to his descendants, severely weakens, though does not destroy, the freedom of their will. Luther and Calvin took it one step further and said that Original Sin completely destroyed liberty. So we can thank him for helping open up the floodgates of what I perceive to be a huge part of what hell would be like: the overwhelmingly negative infatuation with ascetism. Meanwhile, Augustine's arguments against magic, differentiating it from miracle, were crucial in the early Church's fight against paganism and became a central thesis in the later denunciation of witches and witchcraft. In other words, he perhaps unintentionallly contributed to the burning alive of many innocent people.However, because it is impossible to separate Christianity form European intellectual tradition, we must (for me grudgingly so) acknowledge Augustine's positive role.1. in bringing Greek thought back into the Christian/European intellectual tradition.2. his writing on the human will and ethics would become a focus for later thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. 3. His extended meditation on the nature of time imfluenced even agnostics such as Bertrand Russell. 4. throughout the 20th century Continental philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt and Elshtaing were inspired by Augustine's ideas on intentionality, memory, and language.5. Augustine's vision of the heavenly city has probably influenced the secular projects and traditions of the Enlightenment, Marxism, Freudianism and Eco-fundamentalism.Augustine was a medieval thinker who contributed many things, and we must understand he did live in a dark time. I admit his positive achievements (like contributing to my atheism) but we must also realize how his asceticism, fundamentalism and guilt-mongering contributed immensely to some of the darkest moments in history. 4.5 stars for being an important part of history and our understanding of it, whether Augustine's influence is seen as good, bad, or in-between.

[cecrow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A classic work for its influence on Christian theology going forward, but hardly a pleasure read for anyone not a student of such or not keenly interested in early Christian lore. Non-religious at my best, I read it as an early example of autobiography and for the sake of its place in history; but the story of a man's search for himself and his quest for truth is something we all go through at some point in our quest for self-identity. In Augustine's case it is the story of an atheist brought to God, a journey that included the search for truth in many other directions before he resorted to religion. This was a very difficult read, a chore really, and it took me much longer than its page count warranted. I had to lean on Sparknotes quite a bit to help me navigate it. Merging neo-platonic philosophy with Christianity, Augustine argues that everyone and everything moves towards God, knowingly or not, as part of a quest to achieve near-perfect (only God is perfect) state of being. That is an essential message to be aware of and watching for if you've any hope of getting through this.The first nine parts are his biography, which serves as a sort of case study. This was the portion that satisfied my amateur interest. Augustine apologizes to God for every sin he can ever remember making, including some (e.g. crying incessantly as a babe) that he can't. Citing the evil sin of taking pride in his grammar lessons and rhetoric skills, etc. makes him sound almost a flagellant. Slightly more legitimate was the minor theft of fruit committed under peer pressure, and more philandering than was strictly warranted. Most peculiar to me was the supposed sin of taking pleasure in watching tragic drama, as he wonders where the pleasure came from to be entertained by tales of others' suffering, albeit fictional.The last four parts are increasingly obtuse as he lays out his theory of change that moves towards God. I could barely parse these chapters. The first explored memory, the next was on the nature of time, the next the biblical story of creation, and the last ... Sparknotes doesn't cover this one and it lost me so completely, I can't even hazard a guess at what it was addressing even though I read every word. The tenth chapter is also a discussion of temptations and gave me the sad impression that he had built a cage about himself, cutting himself off from every pleasure life has to offer and reducing his experience to mere survival. He writes that of course he knows he cannot permit anyone to dissuade him from this position. It's a typical tenet in any fundamentalist perspectives, this defining anyone who tries to talk you out of your beliefs as inherently evil, permitting your dismissal of their every argument without having to hear or consider (been there, done that, bought the Ayn Rand t-shirt - sold it back.) I have met a brilliant man, one who became deeply inhibited by the self-identity he arrived at.

[a1abwriter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the most excellent books I've every read. From start to finish I was captivated letter by letter, word by word and so on.You do not have to be a catholic, or even a christian to enjoy this mans tail of finding faith.

[beau0p0laurence · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I profoundly disagree with Augustine's conceptualization of God/spirituality and truly wish he had kept his macho guilt to himself (our world would be so very different if he had). But his influence on Christian (and so U.S.) culture is undeniable, and so this is a good book to have read.