Confessions
of
Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.
Edition established and presented by
Nicolas Madelenat di Florio
From the Society of Literary History of France.
To Jean-Yves Naudet, the Catholic Academy of France, with the recognition of the author.
To these people who, in the shadow of our time, dare to seek the light.
(this text, delivered in different parts of this blog will be published one week ahead of delivery in "The barrel of oxygen." The first issue was published in Issue 8)
Book One.
Chapter I. Desire of praise.
You are great and highly commendable, O my Lord! Your power is flawless, and your wisdom knows no bounds; and yet the man who is only a puny portion of your creatures, man is always responsible for the miseries of his birth and the reproach of his sin, the man who serves as evident proof of this truth, you humiliate the proud, you want to rent. Heard that the man who is so little, wishes to praise you, especially as you render him the praise of thy holy name, they are just as enjoyable. You've created for you and your heart will suffer from constant anxiety, and will never rest in the enjoyment of your own greatness. So this desire since I can not think that your movements, made me understand who must take the forefront of our homage, or the praise of your worth, or request your favor. But who could in ignorance of your Majesty, implore the help of your grace? We may misunderstand and ask what is without discretion should carefully avoid. Maybe you know, you should rely. But how men they will demand the mercies of that which they do not know the Godhead? Or how shall they believe without instructor? Also: Those praise the Lord, who seek , because those who seek it, find it, and those who find the praise. I seek you, my God, you are invoking, and I invoke you into believing the truth of your Being, since Gospel told you. The faith that you have inspired me, for the merits and blood of your Son, you claim for myself.
Chapter II. God is in us, and we in him.
And I how to invoke my Lord and my God, since the claim is to call me? What part of myself is empty of God, inviting him to come? This great God, who also fills necessarily Heaven and Earth, who has freely created, he sees that his vast spaces does not hold? Is it really believable, my God, there is some something in me that you understand? What! Heaven and earth even as you did, and in which you did me, you contain? Should we conclude that everything is, you understand, because nothing would be, if you do not press your hand? And therefore how can I ask you to come with me, can not be without you? Where can I go beyond the sky? I'm not now at the center of the earth, and yet you're already there: because even though I descended into the underworld, you are now. I'm not away from you, my God, since I would not at all, if you were in me or else I would not if I were you, of whom, by whom and for whom all creatures are. It is so, my Lord, it is so. So where do I call you is in me, and when will you come with me, being you? At which end of the world, above the sky, and below the earth, could I withdraw to my God who said I fill heaven and earth , came in me?
Chapter III. God fills all his creatures.
Heaven and earth contain you they, because you fill them? Or is it something you after they met, because you are not content? And when you sprinkle the rest of your essence, after these two great globes are full? Maybe you understand that all things, since you fill the container, you need something to be understood. The vessels are filled with your divine being, do not give you the point of consistency, even if they are broken, you're not about to pour yourself out. And when you pour out your stuff on us, you do not Drain, but you pick up ours, which is lost and dissipated. But here is a strange wonder, that you fill everything you fill it with you all. Maybe the only Ones that can hold all your Divine Nature, and hold all at once the same game? Or maybe each of them, according to their different abilities, includes a diverse, larger greater, and a smaller lower. It should therefore give the most and the least in you. Is it not also that you are just everywhere, but nothing that contains everything you?
Chapter IV. God communicates his property without the decrease.
Who are you So, my God, who are you, if not the Lord God of all things? For who would Master, the Grand Master, and God, our God? Oh great, very good, very powerful, very compassionate, very fair, very hidden and very present at all, very beautiful, very strong, constant, incomprehensible, immutable, changing everything, never again, never old! It is you who keep your creatures in force, and which consumes secretly proud of the old earth. You are constantly in action, and the rest without movement, still active and quiet, raising unnecessarily spreading without division, completing the Beings of your essence, supporting them with your support, protecting your care, producing their natures, maintaining their lives, and completing their perfection. You are looking for, although you lack nothing, you love without passion, you're jealous that you have with insurance. You repent without displeasure, and you get angry without anxiety; you change your works without changing your advice, you collect everything you find, and lose nothing of what you have. Ever you're poor, though you are always eager to gain, never covetous, and wear you demand of everyone. We give you beyond what you ask, to make you accountable? But that has only one property, which is not your field? You pay debts without having made them, you communicate your property without losing them. And what do we say, my God, my only life, my dear and holy delight, as we say in all this, which is beneficial to your glory? And that says something about you, when he speaks? Woe to those who, however, are silent your praise, since the greatest talkers are just dumb, if they talk about you.
Chapter V. He asked God's love and forgiveness of sins.
Who me will this favor, I based all-you? To whom shall I have the obligation you have opened my heart, that you ôtiez the remembrance of my crimes, the sacred brew of your love, and leaving everything else, I embrace my only good? How do you rank with me? Open my mouth and made as I speak. In what account am I to you, to intrude Act that sweet love you, and even meditate stringent punishments to my rebellion, I lost it just duty? Alas! Is it a small disaster does not love you? My God, my Lord, I beseech you by all your kindness to tell me what you are to me : Tell my soul, I am your salvation. But tell so high that I hear. These are the ears of my heart that I present, open them, and say to my soul I am your hello, I follow that voice, and I'll wait. Do I hide not your face, I die for fear of dying, and I lose my light, if I see the divine face. The remains of my soul is close to the vastness of your being, expand its capacity up to you to understand. She is in bad shape, take care of and she has only ruins, put there by hand. It has defects that may offend your eyes, I admit it and do it and ignore it, but correct them, or else that you do I send this prayer? Lord, wipe yourself my secret spots, and forgive the faults outside your servant. I take my trust in your goodness, that's why I have my appeal. You know, Lord, is it not true that I accused myself for my crimes, and that you have forgiven the wickedness of my heart, I enter into condemnation Who are you with the truth; me who am but a lie, I do not want to flatter lest my iniquity not mistaken . I do not dispute my innocence to your justice: because if you look at all the faults of men at a pinch, my God, my God, who will succeed?
Chapter VI. God is the only principle of all good.
Although I am but dust and ashes, let me implore your clemency, however, since it's your friendly kindness that I speak, and not to some mocking insolence. Maybe you'll laugh you my simplicity, but will you my compassion misery. I contend that other thing, my God, if I do not know where I came in this dying life, or to speak more truly, in this living death. Then your kindness brought me up as I learned from my father and mother, from whom and in which, over time, you have made the members of my flesh, because for me I do not remember. So I found by entering the world, the sweetness of milk. It is true that neither my mother or my nurse, do not ignite their own breasts this delightful liqueur that I drew. It was you who contact me through them, the order and arrangement that your Providence has wisely established in nature, and according to the measure of your gifts endless. It is also you who did it denied me what you gave them to me, especially since they spared me with discretion, that you their departure in abundance. And so well that I had you by them, jointly me nice and helpful. I say that this property came from you, because all the goods have no other source that your goodness and that my salvation does not recognize other principle that your mercies. Truth that I learned from you, through the voice of all that is inside and outside of me, for then, all my knowledge was to suckle, to enjoy those innocent pleasures that I sucked my breast, and cry my little sense of pain, if someone was me. After I began to laugh, first when I was asleep and then being awake at least to me Will you say, what I believed without penalty, with experience of other children on the report, otherwise I could remember. And then gradually I began to feel and know me, so I tried to show my wishes to those who were to perform, which was impossible, especially as they were within me and to them outside, unable to give into my soul not one of their senses. I was struggling so my arms and legs, trying to understand my wishes, by all signs that I could form my thoughts. And when it was not what I wanted, or because they did not penetrate my little moods, or afraid to give me things that were contrary m'eussent, I became angry, not only against my servants, but also against those whom I had no right to command: and so the tears avenged their disobedience. I knew I had done all this, seeing other children, which gave me more knowledge of what they did not know by their actions, that those who raised me in their interview. And now my child is unconscious, and yet I breathe. For you, my Lord, who still live, and that nothing ever dies, you are and will always be the same because you are at the time of birth and all we can think beyond time; but more because you are the God and Lord of all that you have created. So it is in your gasoline that causes all beings are changeable without motion or movement, and that the principle of all that is changed by continual vicissitudes, remains firm and stopped on the stillness of your nature. So is it in you, that all creatures deprived of reason and subject to time, have a lively, reasonable and eternal idea of what they are in time. Teach me, ye my Lord, for I am your servant, you who are kind to me, who am miserable, if my child has followed some other age already past, or if she kept me company in my mother's womb. I was told I do not know what these early years of my life, and then I saw and heard about pregnant women what happens to them during their pregnancy. What, my chaste delight, my God, even before that age, was I in any place or something? Neither father nor mother can not teach me these secrets, I have neither the experience of others, nor is my memory above. Can you laughing at my simplicity, if it is indeed you command me to know you and rent you that I understand. I confess myself your debtor, Lord of heaven and earth, though I do not know all my debts. I give thanks to my childhood, and that other part of my life that I hid, whose knowledge comes to us as we draw conjectures of others, and the report of our mothers. I lived and I was already then, and even the release of my childhood, I began to invent ways to make myself heard. Who is it that animal's birth, if not you, my Lord? Could it be a creation or production of itself? Or perhaps there another source from which being and life are derived in us? Is there some other principle point of our birth that you, who to be and live are two things, because Being sovereign and sovereign life are nothing but yourself? You are infinite and you never change, especially as the present day does not pass to you, though strictly speaking, it happens in you: because that, like anything else, is in your nature. Because anything could Passage nothing to being, if your Divine Essence not contained it. And since your years shall not fail : your years is not that today? And how many of our days, and those of our Fathers did they already lost in this day of eternity, which they took and will take their existence and extent. For you, you are always the same, and everything must be tomorrow and beyond, all that went before yesterday and that's what you do, what you do, and what you did today ' hui. What matter does it if what I say is not the intelligence of someone, he would rejoice, and that ravished in admiration, he says: What's this? Naturally, in his ignorance he even rejoice, preferring, not finding the secret of your mysteries, find the object of his desires, that of finding enlightenment in his doubts, finding no reason to love her.
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