Whereas at
Carthage there reigns among the scholars a most disgraceful and unruly
licence. They burst in audaciously, and with gestures almost
frantic, disturb all order which any one hath established for the good
of his scholars. Divers outrages they commit, with a wonderful
stolidity, punishable by law, did not custom uphold them; that
custom evincing them to be the more miserable, in that they now do
as lawful what by Thy eternal law shall never be lawful; and they
think they do it unpunished, whereas they are punished with the very
blindness whereby they do it, and suffer incomparably worse than
what they do. The manners then which, when a student, I would not make
my own, I was fain as a teacher to endure in others: and so I was well
pleased to go where, all that knew it, assured me that the like was
not done. But Thou, my refuge and my portion in the land of the
living; that I might change my earthly dwelling for the salvation of
my soul, at Carthage didst goad me, that I might thereby be torn
from it; and at Rome didst proffer me allurements, whereby I might
be drawn thither, by men in love with a dying life, the one doing
frantic, the other promising vain, things; and, to correct my steps,
didst secretly use their and my own perverseness.
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