And it seemed to me better to believe Thee to have created no evil
(which to me ignorant seemed not some only, but a bodily substance,
because I could not conceive of mind unless as a subtile body, and
that diffused in definite spaces), than to believe the nature of evil,
such as I conceived it, could come from Thee. Yea, and our Saviour
Himself, Thy Only Begotten, I believed to have been reached forth
(as it were) for our salvation, out of the mass of Thy most lucid
substance, so as to believe nothing of Him, but what I could imagine
in my vanity. His Nature then, being such, I thought could not be born
of the Virgin Mary, without being mingled with the flesh: and how that
which I had so figured to myself could be mingled, and not defiled,
I saw not. I feared therefore to believe Him born in the flesh, lest I
should be forced to believe Him defiled by the flesh. Now will Thy
spiritual ones mildly and lovingly smile upon me, if they shall read
these my confessions. Yet such was I.
Furthermore, what the Manichees had criticised in Thy Scriptures,
I thought could not be defended; yet at times verily I had a wish to
confer upon these several points with some one very well skilled in
those books, and to make trial what he thought thereon; for the
words of one Helpidius, as he spoke and disputed face to face
against the said Manichees, had begun to stir me even at Carthage:
in that he had produced things out of the Scriptures, not easily
withstood, the Manichees' answer whereto seemed to me weak.
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