For what mortal can? For
Thou wert ever with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most
bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures
without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in
Thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and
killest us, lest we die from Thee. Where was I, and how far was I
exiled from the delights of Thy house, in that sixteenth year of the
age of my flesh, when the madness of lust (to which human
shamelessness giveth free licence, though unlicensed by Thy laws) took
the rule over me, and I resigned myself wholly to it? My friends
meanwhile took no care by marriage to save my fall; their only care
was that I should learn to speak excellently, and be a persuasive
orator.
For that year were my studies intermitted: whilst after my return
from Madaura (a neighbour city, whither I had journeyed to learn
grammar and rhetoric), the expenses for a further journey to
Carthage were being provided for me; and that rather by the resolution
than the means of my father, who was but a poor freeman of Thagaste.
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