Confessions by Augustine

Author:Augustine
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Liveright

[12.29] I was speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart when I suddenly heard from a nearby house a voice—that of a boy or a girl, I could not tell—repeating in a singsong, “Pick up and read, pick up and read.” That instant, my countenance changed and I began to wonder intently whether there could be some kind of game in which children sang such words, but I could not remember there being such a game. I checked the torrent of my tears and rose, concluding that these words were clearly a divine command that I open the Book and read the first line I found. I had heard how Saint Anthony had come upon a reading of the Gospel and had understood the words he heard being read out as an admonition, as if they were being spoken to him: “Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”59 With these divine words he was immediately converted to You.60 So I hastened back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for it was there that I had laid down the volume of the Apostle when I had arisen. I seized it, opened it, and in silence read the verse upon which my eyes first fell: “Not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.”61 I neither wished nor needed to read further. Instantly, at the end of these lines, it was as if a light of serenity were pouring into my heart, and all the darkness of uncertainty dispersed.

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