Close at their side the watchful mother, Buy stall-fed pigeons. When you've got them, Chooses her place and asks no other, Flying and gleaning all day long. From the Contemporary Review. the field of the Church-which may be triumphantly quoted by the Roman CathoTHE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. lic controversialist. Yet he will discover also abundant indications of a theological THERE are few books in the world which system, to which, as a whole, he may apply present attractions to so many different classes of readers as the Confessions of Au- of one portion of it—namely, that "it has that which Gibbon has shrewdly observed gustine. In this more fully than in any been received with public applause and seother among his voluminous productions is reflected "that mixture of passion and gen- Still more may he trace the consistent lines cret reluctance by the Latin Church."* tleness, of authority and sympathy, of large of a method, of which it is no exaggeration ness of mind and logical rigour,' "which to say that with its lofty reverence for huhas given him such rare influence in the Christian Church. The man of letters finds man reason and its deferential appeals to in it the very first specimen of those revela- Holy Scripture, it is anti-Roman in its very tions of an inner life, utterly unknown to this delightful volume are we to forget those substance. Nor among the readers of classical antiquity, which have an especial whose approbation its author most valued, charm for the modern spirit. He recognises the men who give it a place among the in it a style, unquestionably clouded by the books which they read before or after they false and affected rhetoric, of a declining have knelt in their Saviour's presence, who civilization, yet rising at times into flights feel in it, across the gulf of years, the very which human oratory has never surpassed, heart-pulse of its saintly author's religious whose contorted antitheses are more than affections, who bless him for wise warnings atoned for by touches of irresistible tender- and undying hopes. We may, I think, go ness, and by those occasional utterances which become lodged in the memory of the tine's Confessions more than of most unineven further than this. It is true of Augushuman race, those one or two words engrav-spired books, ea est qua crescit cum parvulis; it en by the hand of genius upon the rock, which are better than a thousand written grows with our growth. Each age of human life finds in it a peculiar line of attracupon the sand. The psychologist who turns tion. over the pages feels, perhaps, at first, some impatient contempt of the sighs and prayers which interrupt a scientific discussion. But he is startled by some subtle piece of mental analysis, by speculations on Creation, Time, Eternity, Memory, which seem to anticipate not only Reid and Jouffroy, but even Kant and Descartes. The preacher who understands his art may find in the Confessions, not, indeed, ready-made weapons for the nineteenth century, but materials which may be forged into weapons that will reach the soul of every man in every age. † The greatest sacred orators have seldom appeared more original than when they were borrowing judiciously from the Confessions The theologian of our Own Church will discover in the book occasionally expressions and occasionally something more than expressions some of the unguarded rhetoric which was frozen into logic by succeeding generations, some of the tares that already began to grow rankly in *M. Guizot, in his admirable rationale of the Pelagian Controversy. - Histoire de la Civilisation, 1. 180-189. I may instance the use made by Massillon in his sermon, Délai de la Conversion, of the passage: Retinebant nugæ nugarum et subcutiebant vestem meam carneam, et submurmurabant: dimittisne nos? et a momento isto non erimus tecum ultra in æternum? et a momento isto non tibi licebit boc et illud ultra in æternum ?-Confess., vili. 11. tion of passion, by those living sentences In youth it charms us by its delineawhich vibrate as we touch them, and of if they were cut they would bleed. But its which, as Montaigne has said, we feel that psychology seems hopelessly obscure, its metaphysics hopelessly mystic, the whole mass of the composition destitute of those notches and marks for analytic measurement which are exacted by a student trained in our modern schools. Yet after we have not only studied other men's thought, but suffered, and doubted, there are rays which thought ourselves; after we have felt, and open up an avenue of light into the very but a silver mist, and the intellect perceives heart of that which once appeared to us substance where it suspected nothing but confusion. We may even say that these *E.g. the invention of the bodies of Protasius and Gervasius, x. 7, and the request for prayer for Patricius and Monica, ix. 13. Chapter xxxiii. Cardinal Perrone may have had the system and method of Augustine in view, rather than particu lar "texts," when he said, "Otez à ceux de la religion cet Autheur, ils sont défaits, et n'ont plus rien." -Perroniana, p. 100. An amusing passage follows, from which it appears that it was the habit of French preachers to speak of Monseigneur Saint Paul as in the first chapter, "De la Prognostication Pantagrueline." The other saints of the Roman calendar they treated only to Monsieur and Madame. "Monsieur d'O. said that those who in preaching talked of Monsieur Saint Augustine only proved that they were not familiar with that saint." Confessions have been almost equally appreciated by dogmatism and free thought, by Christians and sceptics-by the latter, for the marks which they bear of having come from an age of doubt and distraction; by the former, for the passionate self-surrender from the days of the voice in the garden and the baptism at Milan. Those who dislike the journey love Augustine for his inimitable appreciation of the rest to which it brought him. Those who look upon the rest as a delusion are ready to proclaim that the journey was never traversed with a freer step, or described by a more opulent pencil. structure of his theory upon a doctrine of Time, which he has learned from the Confessions.* It is singular to see a work upon the philosophy of religion based upon Plato and Augustine, put forth by one who, however he may have used Christian language, and hung with sad and regretful love about the outskirts of the City of God, must unhappily be classed as a philosophical Deist. Since the rise of the Church movement in England, the Confessions have been a good deal read among ourselves, but chiefly, doctrinally or theologically. I have not myself met with much in print upon the No stronger evidence of the truth of subject which could serve as an introduction these remarks can be adduced than the va- to the treatise for the use of the general rious points of view from which the Confes- reader. ‡ It is not my intention to produce sions have been studied in France within any regular analysis of a book which so litthe last fifteen or twenty years. Besides a tle admits of that kind of handling. The new. translation by M. Janet, they have success of some able French writers would been handled by Villemain, as a historian; certainly not encourage one to make the atby Saint-Marc Girardin, as a man of let-tempt. Dr. Newman has somewhere laughed ters; by Nourrisson, as a psychologist; by at the late learned Bishop Kaye's arrangeGratry, Flottes, and Pressensée, as philo- ment of the thoughts of Augustine's fervid sophical theologians. More than once eminent lawyers among ourselves, like Sir Joseph Napier, have devoted their leisure to the severe relaxation of writing discussions upon Bishop Butler. A distinguished French advocate, M. Desjardines, has produced a careful analysis of the Confessions as the fruit of one of his summer recesses. By none, however, has the Bishop of Hippo's immortal book been used more freely, or after a more singular fashion, than by a French philosopher who died last year, M. Saisset. Himself a Deist, but enthusiastically devoted to the spiritual school of philosophy, and clinging intensely to those preambles of the faith God, Immortality, Providence, and Prayer-in which it teemed to him possible for a philosopher to intrench himself securely in a safe but limited dogmatism, he produced a work, in some respects of great merit, upon the Philosophy of Religion, with special reference to the Personality of God. The portion of this discussion which sounds the most original is really the least valuable. It contains an argument for the quasi-eternity and quasi-infinity of Creation, intended to meet the objection of those Pantheistic philosophers who treat the Christian and Theistic dogma of Creation as if it attributed change and caprice to God. This theory of the quasieternity of Creation is certainly borrowed from an Alexandrian speculation, which has been handled with some gentleness by Augustine. M. Saisset scaffolds the whole * Sed quid placuit Deo æterno tunc facere cœlum countryman, Tertullian, in the framework of the Thirty-nine Articles. What shall we say of torturing the Confessions into the pigeon-hole of some division of philosophy, or classification of the human faculties, received from the Scotch School of Mental Philosophy into the French Normal School? I shall merely try to present the Confessions from some general points of view which may et terram quæ antea non fecit? Qui hoc dicunt, [sc. the Epicurean materialists] si mundum æternum sine ullo initio, et ideo nec a Deo factum videri volunt, nonne aversi sunt a veritate, et letall morbo impietatis insaniunt? Qui autem a Deo factum fatentur [sc. the Alexandrine school] non tamen eum ut modo quodam vix intelligibili semper sit factus, volunt temporis habere, sed suæ creationis initium, dicunt quidem aliquid; unde sibi Deum videntur ve lut a fortuita temeritate defendere, ne subito ill venisset, et accidisse illi voluntatem novam, cum in venisse credatur in mentem quod nunquam antea nullo sit omnino mutabilis, sed nec video quomodo els potest in ceteris rebus ista ratio subsistere." De Civ. Dei, xi. 4. * Confess. xi. 24, seq. De Civ. Dei, xi. 6, ad init. Saisset Modern Pantheism (English "Citè de Dieu," Introd. i. pp. xil. 25, ad fin. translation), ii. 123. lxxxv.-cii. †The natural alliance between high and low philosophical, and high and low Christian, doctrine, has been remarked by Coleridge and Leibnitz. "I cannot doubt that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general contributed even as, according to his own confession, the books to my re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ; of certain Platonic philosophers commenced the res cue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error, aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy."- Coleridge "Blog. Lit., "i. 200, 201." Inclinâsse eum (Locke) ad Socinianos, quorum paupertina semper fuit de Deo et mente philosophia."- Leibnitz, Epist. ad Biesling. I do not wish to be ungrateful for Dr. Pusey's excellent edition of the Confessions in the Bibliotheca Patrum, with its well-selected parallel passages. open the way for some students to a further enjoyment of them, and bring together preliminary information which, so far as I know, cannot be conveniently found in any one English work. I. The first question which naturally arises the exact meaning of the title. Augustine has answered it elsewhere. It has a double signification. Confession is the voice of adoration as well as penitence. This twofold acceptation gives its significance to the Confessions. They stand alone. Others have written memoirs, autobiographies, religious lives; Augustine alone has written Confessions.* The volume is as far as possible from being exactly a memoir. All that is properly autobiographical ends with the tenth book. To a certain extent the author writes for himself; yet not for himself alone: He confesses himself to God; but he holds his soliloquy in such tones that men also can hear.† He feels bound to this course, for he has been two years a Bishop of the Church, and he expects good results from it. His example will excite" the heart of some not to sleep in desperation, and say I cannot, but rather to waken up in the love of Thy mercy, and in the sweetness of Thy grace." The good are delighted to hear the past evils of those who have now repented of them, not because they are evil, but because they have been and are not. The curious ear of man is not, cannot be, at his heart. But he will proclaim what he is. "With a consciousness which is not doubtful, but certain and plenary, O Lord I love Thee. Thou hast stricken through my heart with Thy word, and I have loved Thee! [" The saintly Bishop had not lived so little in the world as to be ignorant of its ways. He knew that he was baring his breast to his own enemies, and those of the Church. The sobs which he uttered at the feet of Christ; the long cry, in which he wailed out the sins and offences of his youth to his reconciled Father; the broken words of those short sentences which seem to set themselves to some mystic chant at the foot of an altar; he had allowed the world to hear them, and the world was not likely to let them drop. He could bear such taunts quietly enough. But when they were used to weaken his authority, and discredit the Church, he found "Et laudantis, et gementis." Enarrat, Ps. xci. t "Ego quoque, Domine, etiam sic tibi confiteor, ut audient homines."-Confess., x. 3. "Auris eorum non est ad cor meum."- Ibid. words at once masculine and humble. He answers the Donatists thus in one of his popular discourses: "Let them say against us what they will, we will love them, though they will it not; we know, brethren, we know their tongues, for which we will not be angry with them. Be ye patient like us. For they see that they have nothing in their cause, and so turn their tongues which they know, much which they know not. upon us, and begin to speak evil of us, much That which they know is our Past. Why dost thou give up the cause like a heretic, and go to man? For what am I? am I the Catholic Church? We lived ill: I confess it. So much as I glory concerning God's grace, so much-shall I say? I grieve for my guilty Past. I would grieve were I yet in it. But what shall I say? such! But whatever it were, in the name of glory? I cannot; for O, that I had never been Christ it is past. I cry unto God in my weakthe Apostle, to be judged of you, or of man's ness; with me it is a very small thing, saith judgment, yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know myself better than they know me, but God knows me better than I myself do."* do I pru Every one is aware that Augustine, in his Confessions, repeatedly touches upon that kind of sin which every motive of moral dence as well as of natural delicacy should lead ordinary people to conceal from others, or to confess with the most guarded generality. It is not only that between us and other men there is drawn a veil of flesh, through which God only has the right to look, and where the glance of a mortal eye inflames that wounded human modesty which remains in every nature that is not quite brutal. By such confessions we may injure our own souls, retouching the faded lines of dangerous pictures, regretting, it may be, that we have not sinned more, and that we have lost opportunities. We may also do incalculable injury to others by unintentional suggestions. What shall we say of this ele ment in Augustine's writing? His example, in his public confession, stands out almost alone for profit and for wonder, not for imitation. He had never been a profligate in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Measured by the standard of the world even now, much more by that of the society in which he lived, he might have passed without much censure.‡ *Serm. 3. in Ps. xxxvi., $ 19. It is "Recordari volo transactas fœditates meas, et carnales corruptiones animæ meæ; non quod eas amem; sed ut amem te. Deus meus."- -Confess., ii. 1; cf. iv. 1. Thus writes one of the highest anthority upon Augustine: "Talis erat, etiam quum ipse foris esset, ut ab eis qui erant intus, vir bonus haberi possit, in suo quidem genere. Adolescens habuit concubi unworthy of a writer, who, I believe is usually as accurate as he is elegant, to speak of Augustine as the promiscuous lover of the frail beauties of Carthage. More unworthy still is the comparison which others have instituted between Rousseau and the young Augustine. At the very moment when two men are grovelling in sensual sin, there may be a distinction between them. The one, perhaps, feels that he is plunged in a hell of filth, only less dreadful than the hell of fire. The other loves what "the degraded soul unworthily admires." He has a deliberate sympathy with his position, and with those who are like him. He is perfectly satisfied, and thinks it is well for him to be here. One has fallen into the sty, the other lives in it. Of his guilty connection Rousseau exclaims, "It stood me instead of all. The future did not touch me, or only as a prolonged present." But even in the first flush of youthful passion Augustine exhausts all the energy of his imagination to find language which may give us a conception of his misery. He was beaten as with burning rods of iron.† drops of blood; he is determined that no sentimental sighs shall be heaved over the parting-scene between his mistress and himself. The mother of Adeodatus walks veiled and spectral, a memory without a name, from her sixteen years of shame, into the presence of God, with a sigh of penitence and a prayer of hope. The most brutal lines that Byron ever wrote - it is saying much are those in which he attributes to the Confessions the power of awakening an envy of the youthful transgressions of the saintly Bishop. † If Augustine's temperament was naturally deep and passionate, his Confessions present to us the spectacle of such a nature. turning to God with all its depth and all its passion. We can detect in many religious biographies that the mere physical cooling of the bubbling caldron of sensuality passes for conversion; or the passive fear of the consequences of sin presents a maimed gift to God. God forbid that we should scorn or depreciate any motive which brings back a sinner to his Father. We must only mainCorrespondent to this difference between tain that they were not such processes, as the men is the difference of their Confes- figure almost exclusively in modern relisions. No man ever read the earlier portion gious biographies, which won Augustine of Rousseau's without a permanent taint, or to Christ, and that the oblation which he a permanent trial, to his soul. We feel made was richer and more complete in conthat he took an artist's reflective pleasure in sequence. It was his favourite doctrine that every line of the picture. It is the thought- the passions and affections of our nature ful and deliberate masterpiece of a libidi- were not intended to be eradicated by grace, nous imagination. On the contrary, no pru- but turned to their proper objects. We rient women ever said of Augustine as they may say of the Confessions that they are the have been known to say of certain in our most vivid illustration which post-Apostolic own time, who make confessions in fashion- Christianity has produced of Bishop Butler's able drawing-rooms. "Come and hear him. Sermons upon the Love of God. What have He is so handsome, and has been so wicked, we there but the spectacle of a human heart and will tell us all about it." There is a "referring itself implicitly to God, and castcoldness and a whiteness as of winter snowing itself entirely upon Him, its whole attenover the crater of the extinct volcano. There is a reserve in all that effusion. The style is without that affected periphrastic delicacy which is essentially indelicate. His heart might be ulcerated, and leave trailing nam, quod humanæ permittunt leges. Hâc non repudiata sed ereptâ adamavit alteram. Verum utrique servavit conjugii fidem, quam probitatem hodie non temere reperias in sacerdotibus aut Abbatibus."- August., tom. i. (Basil. 1569.) Erasmus Alfonso Fonseca Archiep. Toletano, [The references in this article are generally to that edition.] "In illis annis unam habebam, sed unam tamen, ei quoque servans tori fidem."- Confess., iv. 2. When she returned from Italy to Africa, vowing herself to a pure and single life, he formed, for a time, a second connection of the same nature, intended to be limited to the two years during which he was waiting for a wife. (vi. 15.) It is only right to notice the dark shadow which hangs over Augustine's youth from such expressions as those in Confess., iii. 1, ii. 2. * Οἵτινες οὐ μόνον αὐτὰ ποιοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνευδοκοῦσι τοῖς πρασσούσι. Rom. i. 32. ↑ Confess, lii. 1. tion of life being to obey His commands, and its highest enjoyment arising from the * Confess., vi. 15. See Essais de Littérature et de Morale, par Saint-Marc Girardin-"La péri-, ii. 11., Art. S. Augustin. phrase est souvent plus indécente que le mot."— t "Sermons he read, and lectures he endured, ions. "This, too, was a sealed book to little Juan." Augustine enforces this very beautifully by the example of St. Paul and of our Lord, De Civ. D., xiv. 9. Cf. "As we cannot remove from this earth, or change our general business on it, so neither cau we alter our real nature. Religion does not demand new affections, but only claims the direction of those you already have, those affections you already feel." - Butler. Upon the Love of God. Sermon xiii. |