Being led, however, from this to prefer the Catholic doctrine, I
felt that her proceeding was more unassuming and honest, in that she
required to be believed things not demonstrated (whether it was that
they could in themselves be demonstrated but not to certain persons,
or could not at all be), whereas among the Manichees our credulity was
mocked by a promise of certain knowledge, and then so many most
fabulous and absurd things were imposed to be believed, because they
could not be demonstrated. Then Thou, O Lord, little by little with
most tender and most merciful hand, touching and composing my heart,
didst persuade me- considering what innumerable things I believed,
which I saw not, nor was present while they were done, as so many
things in secular history, so many reports of places and of cities,
which I had not seen; so many of friends, so many of physicians, so
many continually of other men, which unless we should believe, we
should do nothing at all in this life; lastly, with how unshaken an
assurance I believed of what parents I was born, which I could not
know, had I not believed upon hearsay -considering all this, Thou
didst persuade me, that not they who believed Thy Books (which Thou
hast established in so great authority among almost all nations),
but they who believed them not, were to be blamed; and that they
were not to be heard, who should say to me, "How knowest thou those
Scriptures to have been imparted unto mankind by the Spirit of the one
true and most true God?" For this very thing was of all most to be
believed, since no contentiousness of blasphemous questionings, of all
that multitude which I had read in the self-contradicting
philosophers, could wring this belief from me, "That Thou art"
whatsoever Thou wert (what I knew not), and "That the government of
human things belongs to Thee.
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