But now, the more ardently I loved those whose healthful
affections I heard of, that they had resigned themselves wholly to
Thee to be cured, the more did I abhor myself, when compared with
them. For many of my years (some twelve) had now run out with me since
my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of Cicero's Hortensius, I was
stirred to an earnest love of wisdom; and still I was deferring to
reject mere earthly felicity, and give myself to search out that,
whereof not the finding only, but the very search, was to be preferred
to the treasures and kingdoms of the world, though already found,
and to the pleasures of the body, though spread around me at my
will. But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my
early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, "Give me
chastity and continency, only not yet." For I feared lest Thou
shouldest hear me soon, and soon cure me of the disease of
concupiscence, which I wished to have satisfied, rather than
extinguished. And I had wandered through crooked ways in a
sacrilegious superstition, not indeed assured thereof, but as
preferring it to the others which I did not seek religiously, but
opposed maliciously.
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