{"product_id":"the-confessions-isbn-9780375411731","title":"The Confessions","description":"\u003cp\u003eAugustine's fourth-century spiritual autobiography not only is a major document in the history of Christianity, a classic of Roman Africa, and the unchallenged model through the ages for the autobiographical record of the journey to self-knowledge, it also marks a vital moment in the history of Western culture. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Augustine explains how, when, and why he became the man he is, he probes the great themes that others were to explore after himCfaith, time, truth, identity, and self-understanding--with a richness of detail unmatched in ancient literature. Dense with vivid portrayals of friends, family, colleagues, and enemies, \u003ci\u003eThe Confessions\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the passage from a life of sensuality and superstition to a genuine spiritual awakening--in a powerful narrative of one man's inner education that continues to shape the way we think and act today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)\u003c\/p\u003e“Augustine’s \u003ci\u003eConfessions\u003c\/i\u003e are our most brilliant evidence for the spiritual and intellectual progress of a man in the ancient world. We know his life like nobody else’s in that period . . . There is no ordinary limit to the extraordinary range of his mind. He is a fitting study for a lifetime, even for those who do not share the Christian faith which sustained his ceaseless writing and thinking.” –from the Introduction by Robin Lane FoxSt Augustine of Hippo, the great Doctor of the Latin Church, was born at Thagaste in North Africa, in 354 CE. He was brought up as a Christian but he was soon converted to the Manichean religion. He also came under the influence of Neoplatonism. However, in 387 he renounced all his unorthodox beliefs and was baptized into Christianity. His surviving works have profoundly influenced Christian theology and the psychology and political theology of the West.Book I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e INFANCY AND BOYHOOD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Opening prayer and meditation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 1, 1. Great are you,  O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise, your power is immense, and your wisdom  beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to  praise you-we who carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin  and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. Yet these humans, due part of your  creation as they are, still do long to praise you. You arouse us so that praising  you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our  heart is unquiet until it rests in you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Grant me to know and understand, Lord, which  comes first: to call upon you or to praise you? To know you or to call upon you?  Must we know you before we can call upon you? Anyone who invokes what is still unknown  may be making a mistake. Or should you be invoked first, so that we may then come  to know you? But how can people call upon someone in whom they do not yet believe?  And how can they believe without a preacher? But scripture tells us that those who  seek the Lord will praise him, for as they seek they find him, and on finding him  they will praise him. Let me seek you, then, Lord, even while I am calling upon you,  and call upon you even as I believe in you; for to us you have indeed been preached.  My faith calls upon you, Lord, this faith which is your gift to me, which you have  breathed into me through the humanity of your Son and the ministry of your preacher.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 2, 2. How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, when by the very act of  calling upon him I would be calling him into myself? Is there any place within me  into which my God might come? How should the God who made heaven and earth come into  me? Is there any room in me for you, Lord, my God? Even heaven and earth, which you  have made and in which you have made me-can even they contain you? Since nothing  that exists would exist without you, does it follow that whatever exists does in  some way contain you? But if this is so, how can I, who am one of these existing  things, ask you to come into me, when I would not exist at all unless you were already  in me? Not yet am I in hell, after all, but even if I were, you would be there too;  for if I descend to the underworld, you are there. No, my God, I would not exist,  I would not be at all, were you not in me. Or should I say, rather, that I should  not exist if I were not in you, from whom are all things, through whom are all things,  in whom are all things? Yes, Lord, that is the truth, that is indeed the truth. To  what place can I invite you, then, since I am in you? Or where could you come from,  in order to come into me? To what place outside heaven and earth could I travel,  so that my God could come to me there, the God who said, I fill heaven and earth?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 3, 3. So then, if you fill heaven and earth, does that mean that heaven and earth  contain you? Or, since clearly they cannot hold you, is there something of you left  over when you have filled them? Once heaven and earth are full, where would that  remaining part of you overflow? Or perhaps you have no need to be contained by anything,  but rather contain everything yourself, because whatever you fill you contain, even  as you fill it? The vessels which are full of you do not lend you stability, because  even if they break you will not be spilt. And when you pour yourself out over us,  you do not lie there spilt but raise us up; you are not scattered, but gather us  together. Yet all those things which you fill, you fill with the whole of yourself.  Should we suppose, then, that because all things are incapable of containing the  whole of you, they hold only a part of you, and all of them the same part? Or does  each thing hold a different part, greater things larger parts, and lesser things  smaller parts? Does it even make sense to speak of larger or smaller parts of you?  Are you not everywhere in your whole being, while there is nothing whatever that  can hold you entirely?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 4, 4. What are you, then, my God? What are you, I ask, but  the Lord God? For who else is lord except the Lord, or who is god if not our God?  You are most high, excellent, most powerful, omnipotent, supremely merciful and supremely  just, most hidden yet intimately present, infinitely beautiful and infinitely strong,  steadfast yet elusive, unchanging yourself though you control the change in all things,  never new, never old, renewing all things yet wearing down the proud though they  know it not; ever active, ever at rest, gathering while knowing no need, supporting  and filling and guarding, creating and nurturing and perfecting, seeking although  you lack nothing. You love without frenzy, you are jealous yet secure, you regret  without sadness, you grow angry yet remain tranquil, you alter your works but never  your plan; you take back what you find although you never lost it; you are never  in need yet you rejoice in your gains, never avaricious yet you demand profits. You  allow us to pay you more than you demand, and so you become our debtor, yet which  of us possesses anything that does not already belong to you? You owe us nothing,  yet you pay your debts; you write off our debts to you, yet you lose nothing thereby.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What  does anyone who speaks of you really say? Yet woe betide those who fail to speak,  while the chatterboxes go on saying nothing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 5, 5. Who will grant me to find peace  in you? Who will grant me this grace, that you would come into my heart and inebriate  it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace you, my only good?  What are you to me? Have mercy on me, so that I may tell. What indeed am I to you,  that you should command me to love you, and grow angry with me if I do not, and threaten  me with enormous woes? Is not the failure to love you woe enough in itself? Alas  for me! Through your own merciful dealings with me, O Lord my God, tell me what you  are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My  heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, I am your  salvation. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face  from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me  indeed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 6. The house of my soul is too small for you to enter: make it more spacious  by your coming. It lies in ruins: rebuild it. Some things are to be found there which  will offend your gaze; I confess this to be so and know it well. But who will clean  my house? To whom but yourself can I cry, Cleanse me of my hidden sins, O Lord, and  for those incurred through others pardon your servant? I believe, and so I will speak  You know everything, Lord. Have I not laid my own transgressions bare before you  to my own condemnation, my God, and have you not forgiven the wickedness of my heart  ? I do not argue my case against you, for you are truth itself; nor do I wish to  deceive myself, lest my iniquity be caught in its own lies. No, I do not argue the  case with you, because if you, Lord, keep the score of our iniquities, then who,  Lord, can bear it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Infancy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 6, 7. Yet allow me to speak, though I am but dust and  ashes, allow me to speak in your merciful presence, for it is to your mercy that  I address myself, not to some man who would mock me. Perhaps you too are laughing  at me, but still you will turn mercifully toward me, for what is it that I am trying  to say, Lord, except that I do not know whence I came into this life that is but  a dying, or rather, this dying state that leads to life? I do not know where I came  from. But this I know, that I was welcomed by the tender care your mercy provided  for me, for so I have been told by the parents who gave me life according to the  flesh, those parents through whose begetting and bearing you formed me within time,  although I do not remember it myself. The comforts of human milk were waiting for  me, but my mother and my nurses did not fill their own breasts; rather you gave me  an infant's nourishment through them in accordance with your plan, from the riches  deeply hidden in creation. You restrained me from craving more than you provided,  and inspired in those who nurtured me the will to give me what you were giving them,  for their love for me was patterned on your law, and so they wanted to pass on to  me the overflowing gift they received from you. It was a bounty for them, and a bounty  for me from them; or, rather, not from them but only through them, for in truth all  good things are from you, O God. Everything I need for health and salvation flows  from my God. This I learned later as you cried the truth aloud to me through all  you give me, both within and without. At that time I knew only how to suck and be  deliciously comforted, and how to cry when anything hurt my body, but no more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 8.  After this I began to smile, at first only in my sleep and then when I was awake.  So I have been told, and I believe it on the strength of what we see other babies  doing, for I do not remember doing it myself. Little by little I began to notice  where I was, and I would try to make my wishes known to those who might satisfy them;  but I was frustrated in this, because my desires were inside me, while other people  were outside and could by no effort of understanding enter my mind. So I tossed about  and screamed, sending signals meant to indicate what I wanted, those few signs that  were the best I could manage, though they did not really express my desires. Often  I did not get my way, either because people did not understand or because what I  demanded might have harmed me, and then I would throw a tantrum because my elders  were not subject to me, nor free people willing to be my slaves; so I would take  revenge on them by bursting into tears. I have learned that babies behave like this  from those I have been able to watch, and they without knowing it have taught me  more surely what I was like myself than did my nurses who knew me well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 9. My infancy  has been so long dead now, whereas I am alive. But you, O Lord, are ever living and  in you nothing dies, for you exist before the dawn of the ages, before anything that  can be called \"before\"; you are God and Lord of everything that you have created.  In you stand firm the causes of all unstable things; in you the unchangeable origins  of all changeable things abide; in you live the eternal ideas of all irrational and  transient creatures. Tell me, I beg you, tell your miserable suppliant, O merciful  God, whether my infancy was itself the sequel to some earlier age, now dead and gone.  Was there nothing before it, except the life I lived in my mother's womb? Some information  about that has been given me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But then, my  God, my sweetness, what came before that? Was I somewhere else? Was I even someone?  I have nobody to tell me: neither father nor mother could enlighten me, nor the experience  of others, nor any memory of my own. Are you laughing at me for asking you these  questions, and are you perhaps commanding me to praise you and confess to you simply  about what I do know?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 10. Confess to you I will, Lord of heaven and earth, and praise  you for my earliest days and my infancy, which I do not remember. You allow a person  to infer by observing others what his own beginnings were like; we can learn much  about ourselves even from the reports of womenfolk. Already I had existence and life,  and as my unspeaking stage drew to a close I began to look for signs whereby I might  communicate my ideas to others. Where could a living creature like this have come  from, if not from you, Lord? Are any of us skillful enough to fashion ourselves?  Could there be some channel hollowed out from some other source through which existence  and life might flow to us, apart from yourself, Lord, who create us? Could we derive  existence and life from anywhere other than you, in whom to be and to live are not  two different realities, since supreme being and supreme life are one and the same?  You are supreme and you do not change, and in you there is no \"today\" that passes.  Yet in you our \"today\"does pass, inasmuch as all things exist in you, and would have  no means even of passing away if you did not contain them. Because your years do  not fail, your years are one \"Today.\" How many of our days and our ancestors' days  have come and gone in this \"Today\" of yours, have received from it their manner of  being and have existed after their fashion, and how many others will likewise receive  theirs, and exist in their own way? Yet you are the self-same: all our tomorrows  and beyond, all our yesterdays and further back, you will make in your Today, you  have made in your Today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What does it matter to me, if someone does not understand  this? Let such a person rejoice even to ask the question, \"What does this mean?\"  Yes, let him rejoice in that, and choose to find by not finding rather than by finding  fail to find you.","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303854067941,"sku":"NP9780375411731","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375411731.jpg?v=1767738815","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-confessions-isbn-9780375411731","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}