And Your faithful mercy hovered over me afar. Upon what unseemly iniquities did I wear myself out, following a sacrilegious curiosity, that, having deserted You, it might drag me into the treacherous abyss, and to the beguiling obedience of devils, unto whom I immolated my wicked deeds , and in all which You scourged me! I dared, even while Your solemn rites were being celebrated within the walls of Your church, to desire, and to plan a business sufficient to procure me the fruits of death; for which You chastised me with grievous punishments, but nothing in comparison with my fault, O Thou my greatest mercy, my God , my refuge from those terrible hurts, among which I wandered with presumptuous neck, receding farther from You, loving my own ways, and not Yours — loving a vagrant liberty. Those studies, also, which were accounted honourable , were directed towards the courts of law; to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be praised. Such is the blindness of men , that they even glory in their blindness. And now I was head in the School of Rhetoric, whereat I rejoiced proudly, and became inflated with arrogance, though more sedate, O Lord, as You know , and altogether removed from the subvertings of those subverters (for this stupid and diabolical name was held to be the very brand of gallantry) among whom I lived, with an impudent shamefacedness that I was not even as they were. And with them I was, and at times I was delighted with their friendship whose acts I ever abhorred, that is, their subverting, wherewith they insolently attacked the modesty of strangers, which they disturbed by uncalled for jeers, gratifying thereby their mischievous mirth. Nothing can more nearly resemble the actions of devils than these. By what name, therefore, could they be more truly called than subverters ?— being themselves subverted first, and altogether perverted — being secretly mocked at and seduced by the deceiving spirits, in what they themselves delight to jeer at and deceive others. Chapter 4. In the Nineteenth Year of His Age (His Father Having Died Two Years Before) He is Led by the Hortensius Of Cicero to Philosophy, To God, and a Better Mode of Thinking. Among such as these, at that unstable period of my life, I studied books of eloquence, wherein I was eager to be eminent from a damnable and inflated purpose, even a delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I lighted upon a certain book of Cicero, whose language, though not his heart, almost all admire. This book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy , and is called Hortensius . This book, in truth , changed my affections, and turned my prayers to Yourself, O Lord, and made me have other hopes and desires. Worthless suddenly became every vain hope to me; and, with an incredible warmth of heart, I yearned for an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise 2Luke 15:18 that I might return to You. Not, then, to improve my language — which I appeared to be purchasing with my mother's means, in that my nineteenth year, my father having died two years before — not to improve my language did I have recourse to that book; nor did it persuade me by its style, but its matter. How ardent was I then, my God , how ardent to fly from earthly things to You! Nor did I know how You would deal with me. For with You is wisdom. In Greek the love of wisdom is called philosophy , with which that book inflamed me. There be some who seduce through philosophy , under a great, and alluring, and honourable name coloring and adorning their own errors . And almost all who in that and former times were such, are in that book censured and pointed out. There is also disclosed that most salutary admonition of Your Spirit, by Your good and pious 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 dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 3Colossians 2:8-9 And since at that time (as Thou, O Light of my heart, know ) the words of the apostle were unknown to me, I was delighted with that exhortation, in so far only as I was thereby stimulated, and enkindled, and inflamed to love , seek, obtain, hold, and embrace, not this or that sect , but wisdom itself, whatever it were; and this alone checked me thus ardent, that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name, according to Your mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour Your Son, had my tender heart piously drunk in, deeply treasured even with my mother's milk; and whatsoever was without that name, though never so erudite, polished, and truthful, took not complete hold of me.
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