For what am I to myself
without Thee, but a guide to mine own downfall? or what am I even at
the best, but an infant sucking the milk Thou givest, and feeding upon
Thee, the food that perisheth not? But what sort of man is any man,
seeing he is but a man? Let now the strong and the mighty laugh at us,
but let us poor and needy confess unto Thee.
In those years I taught rhetoric, and, overcome by cupidity, made
sale of a loquacity to overcome by. Yet I preferred (Lord, Thou
knowest) honest scholars (as they are accounted), and these I, without
artifice, taught artifices, not to be practised against the life of
the guiltless, though sometimes for the life of the guilty. And
Thou, O God, from afar perceivedst me stumbling in that slippery
course, and amid much smoke sending out some sparks of faithfulness,
which I showed in that my guidance of such as loved vanity, and sought
after leasing, myself their companion. In those years I had one,
-not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out
in a wayward passion, void of understanding; yet but one, remaining
faithful even to her; in whom I in my own case experienced what
difference there is betwixt the self-restraint of the
marriage-covenant, for the sake of issue, and the bargain of a lustful
love, where children are born against their parents' will, although,
once born, they constrain love.
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