When that my father saw me at the baths, now growing towards
manhood, and endued with a restless youthfulness, he, as already hence
anticipating his descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing
in that tumult of the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its
Creator, and becometh enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself,
through the fumes of that invisible wine of its self-will, turning
aside and bowing down to the very basest things. But in my mother's
breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, and the foundation of
Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but a Catechumen,
and that but recently. She then was startled with a holy fear and
trembling; and though I was not as yet baptised, feared for me those
crooked ways in which they walk who turn their back to Thee, and not
their face.
Woe is me! and dare I say that Thou heldest Thy peace, O my God,
while I wandered further from Thee? Didst Thou then indeed hold Thy
peace to me? And whose but Thine were these words which by my
mother, Thy faithful one, Thou sangest in my ears? Nothing whereof
sunk into my heart, so as to do it.
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