Then dost Thou gently
wipe away their tears, and they weep the more, and joy in weeping;
even for that Thou, Lord, -not man of flesh and blood, but -Thou,
Lord, who madest them, re-makest and comfortest them. But where was I,
when I was seeking Thee? And Thou wert before me, but I had gone
away from Thee; nor did I find myself, how much less Thee!
I would lay open before my God that nine-and-twentieth year of
mine age. There had then come to Carthage a certain Bishop of the
Manichees, Faustus by name, a great snare of the Devil, and many
were entangled by him through that lure of his smooth language:
which though I did commend, yet could I separate from the truth of the
things which I was earnest to learn: nor did I so much regard the
service of oratory as the science which this Faustus, so praised among
them, set before me to feed upon. Fame had before bespoken him most
knowing in all valuable learning, and exquisitely skilled in the
liberal sciences. And since I had read and well remembered much of the
philosophers, I compared some things of theirs with those long
fables of the Manichees, and found the former the more probable;
even although they could only prevail so far as to make judgment of
this lower world, the Lord of it they could by no means find out.
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