The Confessions by St. Augustine & Maria Boulding

Author:St. Augustine & Maria Boulding
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Classics, Patristics, Christianity
ISBN: 1565480554
Publisher: New City Press
Published: 2007-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

They return to Milan and are baptized

6, 14. The time arrived for me to give in my name for baptism, so we left the country and moved back to Milan.63 Alypius had decided to join me in being reborn in you, and was already clothed with the humility64 that befitted your mysteries. He was also extremely courageous in subduing his body, even to the point of walking barefoot on the icy soil of Italy, a thing few dared to do. We associated the boy Adeodatus with us as well, my son according to the flesh, born of my sin. Very fair had you fashioned him. He was then about fifteen, but surpassed many educated men of weighty learning. I am acknowledging that these were your gifts, O Lord my God, creator of all things,65 who are more than powerful enough to give fair form to our deformities, for nothing did I contribute to that boy’s making except my fault. It was you, and you alone, who had inspired us to instruct him in your truth as he grew up, and so it is your own gifts that I acknowledge to you. There is a book of ours entitled The Teacher, in which he converses with me. You know that all the thoughts there attributed to my interlocutor were truly his, although he was only about sixteen years old. Many other things even more wonderful did I observe in him. The brilliance he evinced filled me with awe, for who else but you could be the artificer of such prodigies? Very soon you took him away from this life on earth, but I remember him without anxiety, for I have no fear about anything in his boyhood or adolescence; indeed I fear nothing whatever for that man. We included him in the group as our contemporary in the life of your grace, to be schooled along with us in your doctrine.

And so we were baptized, and all our dread about our earlier lives dropped away from us.66 During the days that followed67 I could not get enough of the wonderful sweetness that filled me as I meditated upon your deep design for the salvation of the human race. How copiously I wept at your hymns and canticles, how intensely was I moved by the lovely harmonies of your singing Church! Those voices flooded my ears, and the truth was distilled into my heart until it overflowed in loving devotion; my tears ran down, and I was the better for them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.