It CHAP. VIII.-THE SAME WHEN AT ROME, BEING and that his amendment might plainly be at- feigned. It was, however, a senseless and tributed to Thyself, Thou broughtest it about seducing continency, ensnaring precious souls, through me, but I knowing nothing of it. For not able as yet to reach the height of virtue, one day, when I was sitting in my accustomed and easily beguiled with the veneer of what was place, with my scholars before me, he came in, but a shadowy and feigned virtue. saluted me, sat himself down, and fixed his attention on the subject I was then handling. so happened that I had a passage in hand, which while I was explaining, a simile borrowed from the Circensian games occurred to me, as likely to make what I wished to convey pleasanter and plainer, imbued with a biting jibe at those whom that madness had enthralled. Thou knowest, O our God, that I had no thought at that time of curing Alypius of that plague. But he took it to himself, and thought that I would not have said it but for his sake. And what any other man would have made a ground of offence against me, this worthy young man took as a reason for being offended at himself, and for loving me more fervently. For Thou hast said it long ago, and written in Thy book, "Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee."1 But I had not rebuked him, but Thou, who makest use of all consciously or unconsciously, in that order which Thyself knowest (and that order is right), wroughtest out of my heart and tongue burning coals, by which Thou mightest set on fire and cure the hopeful mind thus languishing. Let him be silent in Thy praises who meditates not on Thy mercies, which from my inmost parts confess unto Thee. For he upon that speech rushed out from that so deep pit, wherein he was wilfully plunged, and was blinded by its miserable pastimes; and he roused his mind withness; and would that he had shut his ears also! which his parents had bewitched him to pursue, 13. He, not relinquishing that worldly way had gone before me to Rome, to study law, and there he was carried away in an extraordinary manner with an incredible eagerness after the gladiatorial shows. For, being utterly opposed met by chance by divers of his acquaintance and to and detesting such spectacles, he was one day fellow-students returning from dinner, and they with a friendly violence drew him, vehemently objecting and resisting, into the amphitheatre, on a day of these cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: "Though you drag my body to that place, and there place me, can you force shows? Thus shall I be absent while present, me to give my mind and lend my eyes to these and so shall overcome both you and them." They hearing this, dragged him on nevertheless, desirous, perchance, to see whether he could do as he said. had taken their places as they could, the whole When they had arrived thither, and place became excited with the inhuman sports. But he, shutting up the doors of his eyes, forbade his mind to roam abroad after such naughti For, upon the fall of one in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirring him strongit were to despise and rise superior to it, no matly, he, overcome by curiosity, and prepared as ter what it were, opened his eyes, and was struck whom he desired to see, was in his body ;* and with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, a resolute moderation; whereupon all the filth of the Circensian pastimes' flew off from him, and he did not approach them further. Upon this, he prevailed with his reluctant father to let him be my pupil. He gave in and consented. And Alypius, beginning again to hear me, was involved in the same superstition as I was, loving in the Manichæans that ostentation of continency which he believed to be true and un- gospel. The gospel is nothing else than the preaching and the pre 1 Prov. ix. 8. The games in the provinces of the empire were on the same model as those held in the Circus Maximus at Rome, though not so imposing. This circus was one of those vast works executed by Tarquinius Priscus. Hardly a vestige of it at the present time remains, though the Cloaca Maxima, another of his stupendous works, has not, after more than 2500 years, a stone displaced, and still performs its appointed service of draining the city of Rome into the Tiber. In the circus were exhibited chariot and foot races, fights on horseback, representations of battles (on which occasion camps were pitched in the circus), and the Grecian athletic sports introduced after the conquest of that country. See also sec. 13, note, below. Augustin, in book v. sec. 9, above, refers to the reputed sanctity of Manichæus, and it may well be questioned whether the sect deserved that unmitigated reprobation he pours out upon them in his De Moribus, and in parts of his controversy with Faustus. Certain it is that Faustus laid claim, on behalf of his sect, to a very different moral character to that Augustin would impute to them. He says (Con. Faust. v. 1): "Do I believe the gospel? You ask me if I believe it, though my obedience to its commands shows that I do. I should rather ask you if you believe it, since you give no proof of your belief. I have left my father, mother, wife, and children, and all else that the Gospel requires (Matt. xix. 29); and do you ask if I believe the gospel? Perhaps you do not know what is called the cept of Christ. I have parted with all gold and silver, and have left off carrying money in my purse; content with daily food; without anxiety for to-morrow; and without solicitude about how I shall be fed, or wherewithal I shall be clothed; and do you ask if I believe the gospel? You see in me the blessings of the gospel (Matt. v. 3-11); and do you ask if I believe the gospel? You see me poor, meek, a peacemaker, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, bearing persecutions and enmity for righteousness' sake; and do you doubt my belief in the gospel?" It is difficult to understand that Manichæanism can have spread as largely as it did at that time, if the asceticism of many amongst them had not been real. It may be noted that in his controversy with Fortunatus, Augustin strangely declines to discuss the charges of immorality that had been brought against the Manichæans; and in the last chapter of his De Moribus, it appears to be indicated that one, if not more, of those whose evil deeds are there spoken of had a desire to follow the rule of life laid down by Manichæus. 4 The scene of this episode was, doubtless, the great Flavian Amphitheatre, known by us at this day as the Colosseum. It stands in the valley between the Calian and Esquiline hills, on the site of a lake formerly attached to the palace of Nero. Gibbon, in his graphic way, says of the building (Decline and Fall, i. 355): "Posterity admires, and will long admire, the awful remains of the amphitheatre of Titus, which so well deserved the epithet of colossal." building of an elliptic figure, five hundred and sixty-four feet in length, and four hundred and sixty-seven in breadth, founded on It was a he fell more miserably than he on whose fall that mighty clamour was raised, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of his soul, which was bold rather than valiant hitherto; and so much the weaker in that it presumed on itself, which ought to have depended on Thee. For, directly he saw that blood, he therewith imbibed a sort of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eye, drinking in madness unconsciously, and was delighted with the guilty contest, and drunken sand, and successively assumed the most different forms; at one the most part either criminals or captives taken in war. On the with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the same he came in, but was one of the throng he came unto, and a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, shouted, was excited, carried away with him the madness which would stimulate him to return, not only with those who first enticed him, but also before them, yea, and to draw in others. And from all this didst Thou, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, pluck him, and taughtest him not to repose confidence in himself, but in Thee-but not till long after. APPRE CHAP. IX.-INNOCENT ALYPIUS, BEING fourscore arches, and rising, with four successive orders of architecture, to the height of one hundred and forty feet. The outside of the edifice was encrusted with marble, and decorated with statues. The slopes of the vast concave which formed the inside were filled and surrounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble, likewise covered with cushions, and capable of receiving with ease above fourscore thousand spectators. Sixty-four vomitories (for by that 14. But this was all being stored up in his name the doors were very aptly distinguished) poured forth the imAs was that mense multitude; and the entrances, passages, and staircases were memory for a medicine hereafter. contrived with such exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the also, that when he was yet studying under me senatorial, the equestrian, or the plebeian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or confusion. Nothing was omitted at Carthage, and was meditating at noonday in which in any respect could be subservient to the convenience or pleasure of the spectators. They were protected from the sun and the market-place upon what he had to recite (as rain by an ample canopy occasionally drawn over their heads. The scholars are wont to be exercised), Thou sufferair was continually refreshed by the playing of fountains, and pro-edst him to be apprehended as a thief by the fusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromatics. In the tre of the edifice, the arena, or stage, was strewed with the finest moment it seemed to rise out of the earth, like the garden of the Hesperides, and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water; and what had just before appeared a level plain might be suddenly converted into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels and replenished with the monsters of the deep. In the decoration of these scenes the Roman emperors displayed their wealth and liberality; and we read, on various occasions, that the whole furniture of the amphitheatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, or of amber." In this magnificent building were enacted venatios or hunting scenes, sea-fights, and gladiatorial shows, in all of which the greatest lavishness was exhibited. The men engaged were for occasion of the triumph of Trajan for his victory over the Dacians, it is said that ten thousand gladiators were engaged in combat, and that in the naumachia or sea-fight shown by Domitian, ships and men in force equal to two real fleets were engaged, at an enormous expenditure of human life. "If," says James Martineau (Endeavours after the Christian Life, pp. 261, 262), “ you would wit ness a scene characteristic of the popular life of old, you must go to the amphitheatre of Rome, mingle with its eighty thousand spectators, and watch the eager faces of senators and people; observe how the masters of the world spend the wealth of conquest, and indulge the pride of power. See every wild creature that God has made to dwell, from the jungles of India to the mountains of Wales, from the forests of Germany to the deserts of Nubia, brought hither to be hunted down in artificial groves by thousands in an hour, behold the captives of war, noble, perhaps, and wise in their own land, turned loose, amid yells of insult, more terrible for their foreign tongue, to contend with brutal gladiators, trained to make death realities as a wholesale public sport; mark the light look with which the multitude, by uplifted finger, demands that the wounded combatant be slain before their eyes; notice the troop of Christian martyrs awaiting hand in hand the leap from the tiger's den. And when the day's spectacle is over, and the blood of two thousand victims stains the ring, follow the giddy crowd as it streams from the vomi tories into the street, trace its lazy course into the Forum, and hear it there scrambling for the bread of private indolence doled out by the purse of public corruption; and see how it suns itself to sleep in the open ways, or crawls into foul dens till morning brings the hope of games and merry blood again;-and you have an idea of the Imperial people, and their passionate living for the moment, which the gospel found in occupation of the world." The desire for these shows increased as the empire advanced. Constantine failed to put a stop to them at Rome, though they were not admitted into the Christian capital he established at Constantinople. We have already shown (iii. sec. 2, note, above) how strongly attendance at stage-plays and scenes like these was condemned by the Christian teachers. The passion, however, for these exhibitions was so great, that they were only brought to an end after the monk Telemachus-horrified that Christians should witness such scenes -had been battered to death by the people in their rage at his fling ing himself between the swordsmen to stop the combat. This tragic episode occurred in the year 403, at a show held in commemoration of a temporary success over the troops of Alaric. the favourite amusement, and present the most solemn of individual officers of the market-place. For no other 15. But thus far was he to be instructed. For immediately, O Lord, Thou camest to the succour of his innocency, whereof Thou wert the sole witness. For, as he was being led either to prison or to punishment, they were met by a certain architect, who had the chief charge of laws. This Alypius resisted; a bribe was promthe public buildings. They were specially glad ised, he scorned it with all his heart; threats to come across him, by whom they used to be were employed, he trampled them under foot, suspected of stealing the goods lost out of the all men being astonished at so rare a spirit, market-place, as though at last to convince him which neither coveted the friendship nor feared by whom these thefts were committed. He, the enmity of a man at once so powerful and so however, had at divers times seen Alypius at greatly famed for his innumerable means of the house of a certain senator, whom he was doing good or ill. Even the judge whose counwont to visit to pay his respects; and, recog- cillor Alypius was, although also unwilling that nising him at once, he took him aside by the it should be done, yet did not openly refuse it, hand, and inquiring of him the cause of so great but put the matter off upon Alypius, alleging a misfortune, heard the whole affair, and com- that it was he who would not permit him to do manded all the rabble then present (who were it; for verily, had the judge done it, Alypius very uproarious and full of threatenings) to go would have decided otherwise. With this one with him. And they came to the house of the thing in the way of learning was he very nearly young man who had committed the deed. led away,—that he might have books copied for There, before the door, was a lad so young as him at prætorian prices. But, consulting jusnot to refrain from disclosing the whole through tice, he changed his mind for the better, esthe fear of injuring his master. For he had fol- teeming equity, whereby he was hindered, more lowed his master to the market-place. Whom, gainful than the power whereby he was perso soon as Alypius recognised, he intimated it mitted. These are little things, but "He that to the architect; and he, showing the hatchet is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also to the lad, asked him to whom it belonged. in much." Nor can that possibly be void "To us," quoth he immediately; and on being which proceedeth out of the mouth of Thy further interrogated, he disclosed everything. Truth. "If, therefore, ye have not been faithThus, the crime being transferred to that house, and the rabble shamed, which had begun to triumph over Alypius, he, the future dispenser of Thy word, and an examiner of numerous causes in Thy Church, went away better experienced and instructed. CHAP. X.-THE WONDERFUL INTEGRITY OF ALY- 16. Him, therefore, had I lighted upon at 2 1" Alypius became Bishop of Thagaste (Aug. De Gestis c. Emerit, secs. 1 and 5). On the necessity which bishops were under of bearing secular causes, and its use, see Bingham, ii. c. 7."-E. B. P. "The Lord High Treasurer of the Western Empire was called Comes Sacrarum largitionum. He had six other treasurers in so many provinces under him, whereof he of Italy was one under whom this Alypius had some office of judicature, something like (though far inferior) to our Baron of the Exchequer. See Sir Henry Spelman's Glossary, in the word Comes; and Cassiodor, Var. v. c. 40."-W. W. 3 ful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? He, being such, did at that time cling to me, and wavered in purpose, as I did, what course of life was to be taken. 17. Nebridius also, who had left his native country near Carthage, and Carthage itself, where he had usually lived, leaving behind his fine paternal estate, his house, and his mother, who intended not to follow him, had come to Milan, for no other reason than that he might live with me in a most ardent search after truth and wisdom. Like me he sighed, like me he wavered, an ardent seeker after true life, and a most acute examiner of the most abstruse questions. So were there three begging mouths, sighing out their wants one to the other, and waiting upon Thee, that Thou mightest give them their meat in due season. And in all the bitterness which by Thy mercy followed our worldly pursuits, as we contemplated the end, why this suffering should be ours, darkness came upon us; and we turned away groaning and exclaiming, "How long shall these things be?" And this we often said; and saying so, we did not relinquish them, for as yet we had discovered noth 3 Pretiis prætorianis. Du Cange says that " Pretium regium is the right of a king or lord to purchase commodities at a certain and definite price." This may perhaps help us to understand the phrase as above employed. 4 Luke xvi. 10. 5 Luke xvi. 11, 12. • Augustin makes a similar allusion to Nebridius' ardour in examining difficult questions, especially those which refer ad doctrinam pietatis, in his 98th Epistle. 7 Ps. cxlv. 15. ing certain to which, when relinquished, we God forbid that it should be so. It is not withmight betake ourselves. CHAP. XI.—BEING TROUBLED BY HIS GRIEVOUS LIFE. out reason, it is no empty thing, that the so eminent height of the authority of the Christian faith is diffused throughout the entire world. Never would such and so great things be wrought for us, if, by the death of the body, the life of the soul were destroyed. Why, therefore, do we delay to abandon our hopes of this world, and give ourselves wholly to seek after God and the blessed life? But stay! Even those things are enjoyable; and they possess some and no little sweetness. We must not abandon them 18. And I, puzzling over and reviewing these things, most marvelled at the length of time from that my nineteenth year, wherein I began to be inflamed with the desire of wisdom, resolving, when I had found her, to forsake all the empty hopes and lying insanities of vain desires. And behold, I was now getting on to my thir-lightly, for it would be a shame to return to tieth year, sticking in the same mire, eager for the enjoyment of things present, which fly away and destroy me, whilst I say, "To-morrow I shall discover it; behold, it will appear plainly, and I shall seize it; behold, Faustus will come and explain everything! O ye great men, ye Academicians, it is then true that nothing certain for the ordering of life can be attained! Nay, let us search the more diligently, and let us not despair. Lo, the things in the ecclesiastical books, which appeared to us absurd afore-state.” time, do not appear so now, and may be other20. Whilst I talked of these things, and these wise and honestly interpreted. I will set my winds veered about and tossed my heart hither feet upon that step, where, as a child, my parents and thither, the time passed on; but I was slow placed me, until the clear truth be discovered. to turn to the Lord, and from day to day deBut where and when shall it be sought? Am-ferred to live in Thee, and deferred not daily to brose has no leisure, we have no leisure to die in myself. Being enamoured of a happy read. Where are we to find the books? Whence life, I yet feared it in its own abode, and, fleeor when procure them? From whom borrowing from it, sought after it. I conceived that I them? Let set times be appointed, and certain hours be set apart for the health of the soul. Great hope has risen upon us, the Catholic faith doth not teach what we conceived, and vainly accused it of. Her learned ones hold it as an abomination to believe that God is limited by the form of a human body. And do we doubt to knock,' in order that the rest may be 'opened'? The mornings are taken up by our scholars; how do we employ the rest of the day? Why do we not set about this? But when, then, pay our respects to our great friends, of whose favours we stand in need? CHAP. XII.—DISCUSSION WITH ALYPIUS CONCERNWhen prepare what our scholars buy from us? When recreate ourselves, relaxing our minds from the pressure of care?" them again. Behold, now is it a great matter to obtain some post of honour! And what more could we desire? We have crowds of influential friends, though we have nothing else, and if we make haste a presidentship may be offered us; and a wife with some money, that she increase not our expenses; and this shall be the height of desire. Many men, who are great. and worthy of imitation, have applied themselves to the study of wisdom in the marriage 19. "Perish everything, and let us dismiss these empty vanities, and betake ourselves solely to the search after truth! Life is miserable, death uncertain. If it creeps upon us suddenly, in what state shall we depart hence, and where shall we learn what we have neglected here? Or rather shall we not suffer the punishment of this negligence? What if death itself should cut off and put an end to all care and feeling? This also, then, must be inquired into. 1 Matt. vii. 7. But should be too unhappy were I deprived of the embracements of a woman; and of Thy merciful medicine to cure that infirmity I thought not, not having tried it. As regards continency, I imagined it to be under the control of our own strength (though in myself I found it not), being so foolish as not to know what is written, that none can be continent unless Thou give it; and that Thou wouldst give it, if with heartfelt groaning I should knock at Thine ears, and should with firm faith cast my care upon Thee. ING A LIFE OF CELIBACY. 21. It was in truth Alypius who prevented me from marrying, alleging that thus we could 2 "I was entangled in the life of this world, clinging to dull hopes of a beauteous wife, the pomp of riches, the emptiness of honours, and the other hurtful and destructive pleasures" (Aug. De Util. escaped, especially when I had crossed the sea, the Academics long Credendi, sec. 3). detained me tossing in the waves, winds from all quarters beating against my helm. And so I came to this shore, and there found a pole-star to whom to entrust myself. For I often observed in the discourses of our priest [Ambrose], and sometimes in yours [Theodorus], that you had no corporeal notions when you thought of God, or even of the soul, which of all things is next to God. But I was withheld, I own, from casting myself speedily into the bosom of true wisdom by the alluring hopes of marriage and honours; meaning, when I had obtained these, to press (as few singularly happy had before me) with oar and sail into that haven, and there rest (Aug. De Vita Beata, sec. 4).—E. B. P. "After I had shaken off the Manichæans and 8 Wisd. viii. 2, Vulg. by no means live together, having so much un- was so astonished, seeing he was ready to enter distracted leisure in the love of wisdom, as we into "a covenant with death;" and he that had long desired. For he himself was so chaste loves, danger shall fall into it. For whatever in this matter that it was wonderful-all the the conjugal honour be in the office of wellmore, too, that in his early youth he had entered ordering a married life, and sustaining children, upon that path, but had not clung to it; rather influenced us but slightly. But that which did had he, feeling sorrow and disgust at it, lived for the most part afflict me, already made a slave from that time to the present most continently. to it, was the habit of satisfying an insatiable But I opposed him with the examples of those lust; him about to be enslaved did an admiring who as married men had loved wisdom, found wonder draw on. In this state were we, until favour with God, and walked faithfully and lov- Thou, O most High, not forsaking our lowliness, ingly with their friends. From the greatness commiserating our misery, didst come to our of whose spirit I fell far short, and, enthralled rescue by wonderful and secret ways. with the disease of the flesh and its deadly sweetness, dragged my chain along, fearing to be loosed, and, as if it pressed my wound, rejected his kind expostulations, as it were the hand of one who would unchain me. Moreover, it was by me that the serpent spake unto Alypius himself, weaving and laying in his path, by my tongue, pleasant snares, wherein his honourable and free feet' might be entangled. CHAP. XIII.-BEING URGED BY HIS MOTHER TO 23. Active efforts were made to get me a wife. I wooed, I was engaged, my mother taking the greatest pains in the matter, that when I was once married, the health-giving bapthat I was being daily fitted, remarking that her tism might cleanse me; for which she rejoiced desires and Thy promises were being fulfilled in At which time, verily, both at my my faith. not. She saw indeed certain vain and fantastic 22. For when he wondered that I, for whom he had no slight esteem, stuck so fast in the bird-lime of that pleasure as to affirm whenever we discussed the matter that it would be impos-request and her own desire, with strong heartfelt sible for me to lead a single life, and urged in cries did we daily beg of Thee that Thou wouldmy defence when I saw him wonder that there est by a vision disclose unto her something conwas a vast difference between the life that he cerning my future marriage; but Thou wouldst had tried by stealth and snatches (of which he had now but a faint recollection, and might therefore, without regret, easily despise), and my sustained acquaintance with it, whereto if but the honourable name of marriage were added, he would not then be astonished at my inability to contemn that course,―then began he also to wish to be married, not as if overpowered by the lust of such pleasure, but from curiosity. For, as he said, he was anxious to know what that could be without which my life, which was so pleasing to him, seemed to me not life but a penalty. For his mind, free from that chain, was astounded at my slavery, and through that astonishment was going on to a desire of trying it, and from it to the trial itself, and thence, perchance, to fall into that bondage whereat he things, such as the earnestness of a human spirit, bent thereon, conjured up; and these she told me of, not with her usual confidence when Thou hadst shown her anything, but slighting them. For she could, she declared, through some feeling which she could not express in words, discern the difference betwixt Thy revelations and the dreams of her own spirit. Yet the affair was pressed on, and a maiden sued who wanted two years of the marriageable age; and, as she was pleasing, she was waited for. CHAP. XIV.-THE DESIGN OF ESTABLISHING A 24. And many of us friends, consulting on 1 "Paulinus says that though he lived among the people and sat and abhorring the turbulent vexations of human over them, ruling the sheep of the Lord's fold, as a watchful shep- life, had considered and now almost determined herd, with anxious sleeplessness, yet by renunciation of the world, and denial of flesh and blood, he had made himself a wilderness, upon living at ease and separate from the tursevered from the many, called among the few" (Ap. Aug. Ep. 24, sec. 2). St. Jerome calls him "his holy and venerable brother, moil of men. And this was to be obtained in Father (Papa) Alypius" (Ep. 39, ibid.). Earlier, Augustin speaks this way; we were to bring whatever we could of him as " abiding in union with him, to be an example to the brethren who wished to avoid the cares of this world" (Ep. 22); severally procure, and make a common houseand to Paulinus (Ep. 27), [Romanianus] "is a relation of the venerable and truly blessed Bishop Alypius, whom you embrace with hold, so that, through the sincerity of our friendyour whole heart deservedly; for whosoever thinks favourably of ship, nothing should belong more to one than that man, thinks of the great mercy of God. Soon, by the help of God, I shall transfuse Alypius wholly into your soul [Paulinus had the other; but the whole, being derived from asked Alypius to write him his life, and Augustin had, at Alypius' all, should as a whole belong to each, and the whole unto all. It seemed to us that this request, undertaken to relieve him, and to do it]; for I feared chiefly lest he should shrink from laying open all which the Lord has bestowed upon him, lest, if read by any ordinary person (for it would not be read by you only), he should seem not so much to set forth the gifts of God committed to men, as to exalt himself."E. B. P. 2 Isa. xxviii. 15. |