is an agreeableness that is taking; and in like manner the other senses find their pleasures in their respective objects. So temporal honor, and the power of commanding and excelling hath something in it that is attractive; hence also arises the desire of revenge. And yet we must not, for the gaining of all or any of these things, depart from thee, O Lord, nor turn aside from thy law. The life also which we live here hath its allurement, by reason of a certain kind of beauty in it, and the proportion which it hath to all the rest of these lower beauties. Likewise the friendship of men is dearly sweet by the union of many souls together.

Upon occasion of all these and the like things sin is committed, when by an immoderate inclination to them, which have but the lowest place amongst good things, men forsake the best and highest goods, viz. thee, O Lord our God, and thy truth, and thy law. For these lowest things have indeed their delights, but not like my God who made all things; because in him doth the just delight, and he is the joy of the upright of heart. Therefore when the question is for what cause any crime was done, it is not usually believed but where it appears that there might be some desire of acquiring some of these lowest of goods, or fear of losing them: for they are fair and beautiful; though in comparison of those superior goods and beatific joys they are mean and contemptible.

A man hath murdered another. Why did he do it? He was in love with his wife, or his estate; or he did it that he might rob him to support his own life; or he was afraid of suffering the like from him; or he had been injured, and sought to be revenged. Would he commit a murder without a cause, merely for the sake of the murder; who can imagine this? For as for that furious and exceeding cruel man [Catiline] of whom a certain author has written that he chose to be wicked and cruel gratis; the cause is assigned in the same place, lest, says he, his hand or his mind should be weakened for want of exercise. And to what end did he refer this also? That being thus exercised in wickedness, he might be enabled to surprise the city [Rome] and obtain honors, power, riches, and be delivered from the fear of the laws, and the difficulties he labored under hrough want of an estate, and a guilty conscience. Therefore even Catiline himself was not in love with his crimes, but with something else, for the sake of which he committed them.

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY.

THOSE studies also, which were accounted commendable, had a view to excelling in the courts of litigation; the more

bepraised, the craftier. Such is men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness. And now I was chief in the rhetoric school, whereat I joyed proudly and swelled with arrogancy, though (Lord, Thou knowest) far quieter and altogether removed from the subvertings of those "Subverters" (for this ill-omened and devilish name was the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived, with a shameless shame that I was not even as they. With them I lived, and was sometimes delighted with their friendship, whose doings I ever did abhor, i. e., their "subvertings," wherewith they wantonly persecuted the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed by a gratuitous jeering, feeding thereon their malicious mirth. . .

Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent out of a damnable and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this book altered my affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord; and made me have other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to me; and I longed with an incredible burning desire for an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue (which thing I seemed to be purchasing with my mother's allowances, in that my nineteenth year, my father being dead two years before) - not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that book; nor did it infuse into me its style, but its matter.

SPIRITUAL YEARNINGS.

How did I burn, then, my God, how did I burn to remount from earthly things to Thee, nor knew I what Thou wouldest do with me. For with Thee is wisdom. But the love of wisdom is called in Greek "Philosophy," with which that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honorable name coloring and

disguising their own errors; and almost all who in that and former ages were such, are in that book censured and set forth. There also is made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout servant: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, knowest) Apostolic Scripture was not known to me. I was delighted with that exhortation so far only that I was thereby strongly roused and kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, whatever it were, and this alone checked me, thus enkindled, that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name according to Thy mercy, O Lord — this name of my Saviour, Thy Son, had my tender heart, even with my mother's milk devoutly drank in, and deeply treasured; and whatsoever was without that name though never so learned, polished, or true - took not entire hold of me.

I resolved then to bend my mind to the Holy Scriptures that I might see what they were. But behold I see a thing not understood by the proud, nor laid open to children; lowly in access, in its recesses lofty, and veiled with mysteries; and I was not such as could enter into it, or stoop my neck to follow its steps. For not as I now speak, did I feel when I turned to those Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of Tully; for my swelling pride shrunk from their lowliness, nor could my sharp wit pierce the interior thereof. Yet were they such as would grow up in a little one. But I disdained to be a little one; and, swollen with pride, took myself to be a great one.

PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATIONS.

THEREFORE I fell among men, proudly doting, exceeding carnal and prating, in whose mouths were the snare of the Devil, limed with the mixture of the syllables of Thy name, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, our Comforter. These names departed not out of their mouth: but so far forth as the sound only and the noise of the tongue, for the heart was void of truth. Yet they cried out "Truth, truth!" and spake much thereof to me, yet it was not

in them; but they spake falsehood, not of Thee only (who truly art Truth), but even of those elements of this world, Thy creatures. And I indeed ought to have passed by even those philosophers who spake truth concerning them, for love of Thee my Father, supremely good, Beauty of all things beautiful. O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and large books, echoed to me of Thee though it was but an echo. And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon-beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself: no, nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they may be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after these first works of Thine, but after Thee thyself, the Truth, "in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Yet they still set before me, in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very Sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our minds. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not in these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather. . . . Such empty husks was I then fed on, and was not fed. But Thou, my soul's Love, "in looking for whom I fail," that I may become strong, art neither those bodies which we see, though in heaven, nor those which we see not there; for Thou hast created them, nor dost thou account them the chiefest of Thy works. How far then art Thou from those fantasies of minefantasies of bodies which altogether are not than which the images of those bodies which are, are far more certain; and more certain still the bodies themselves, which yet Thou art not: no, nor yet the soul, which is the life of the bodies. So, then, better and more certain is the life of the bodies than the bodies. But Thou art the life of souls, the life of lives, having life in Thyself; and changest not, life of my soul.

Where then wert Thou then to me, and how far from me? Far verily was I straying from Thee, barred from the very husks of the swine, whom with husks I fed. For how muck better are the fables of poets and grammarians than these snares? For verses and poems, and "Medea flying," are mora profitable truly than these men's "five elements," variously dis

guised, answering to five dens of darkness, which have no being, yet slay the believer. For verses and poems I can turn to true food, and "Medea flying," though I did sing, I maintained not; though I heard it sung, I believed not; but those things I did believe. Woe, woe, by what steps was I brought down to "the depths of hell," toiling and turmoiling through want of Truth, since I sought after Thee, my God (to Thee I confess it, who hadst mercy on me, not yet confessing), not according to the understanding of the mind, wherein Thou willedst that I should excel the beasts, but according to the sense of the flesh. But Thou wert more in word to me than my most inward part, and higher than my highest. I lighted upon that bold woman "simple and knowing nothing," shadowed out by Solomon, "sitting at the door, and saying, Eat ye bread of secrecies willingly, and drink ye stolen waters which are sweet." She seduced me because she found my soul dwelling abroad in the eye of my flesh, and ruminating on such food as through it I had devoured.

THE FINITE AND INFINITE.

FOR other than this, that which really is I knew not; and was, as it were through sharpness of wit, persuaded to assent to foolish deceivers, when they asked me, "Whence is evil?" "Is God bounded by a bodily shape, and has hairs and nails?" "Are they to be esteemed righteous, who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrificed living creatures?" At which I in my ignorance was much troubled, and departing from the truth, seemed to myself to be making toward it; because as yet I knew not that evil was nothing but a privation of good, until at last a thing ceases altogether to be; which how should I see the sight of, whose eyes reached only to bodies, and of my mind to a phantasm? And I knew not God to be a Spirit, not One who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or whose being was bulk. For every bulk is less in a part than in the whole; and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly everywhere, as Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we were like to God, and might in Scripture be rightly said to be "after the Image of God," I was altogether ignorant. Nor knew I that true inward righteousness, which judgeth not according to custom, but out of the