SCRIPTURA

Church Fathers

Confessions · Confessiones

Augustine

Translated by J. G. Pilkington

“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Augustine’s Latin beside Pilkington’s English, paragraph by paragraph.

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  • Latin: Augustine, Confessionum libri tredecim, text from la.wikisource.org (Confessiones), with its book.chapter.paragraph divisions; sentence openings capitalised.
  • English: J. G. Pilkington, The Confessions of St. Augustin (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 1, 1886).

Contents · 44

  1. 1He Proclaims the Greatness of God, Whom He Desires to Seek and Invoke, Being Awakened by Him.
  2. 2That When a Boy He Learned to Speak, Not by Any Set Method, But from the Acts and Words of His Parents.
  3. 3He Entreats God, that Whatever Useful Things He Learned as a Boy May Be Dedicated to Him.
  4. 4He Disapproves of the Mode of Educating Youth, and He Points Out Why Wickedness is Attributed to the Gods by the Poets.
  5. 5He Deplores the Wickedness of His Youth.
  6. 6He Gives Thanks to God for the Remission of His Sins, and Reminds Every One that the Supreme God May Have Preserved Us from Greater Sins.
  7. 7In the Nineteenth Year of His Age (His Father Having Died Two Years Before) He is Led by the ‘Hortensius’ Of Cicero to ‘Philosophy,’ To God, and a Better Mode of Thinking.
  8. 8He Refers to the Tears, and the Memorable Dream Concerning Her Son, Granted by God to His Mother.
  9. 9Why Weeping is Pleasant to the Wretched.
  10. 10Love Originates from Grace and Beauty Enticing Us.
  11. 11On the Vanity of Those Who Wished to Escape the Omnipotent God.
  12. 12He Sets Out for Rome, His Mother in Vain Lamenting It.
  13. 13Attaining his thirtieth year, he, under the admonition of the discourses of Ambrose, discovered more and more the truth of the Catholic doctrine, and deliberates as to the better regulation of his life.
  14. 14He Leads to Reformation His Friend Alypius, Seized with Madness for the Circensian Games.
  15. 15Being Urged by His Mother to Take a Wife, He Sought a Maiden that Was Pleasing Unto Him.
  16. 16That God is Not Corruptible, Who, If He Were, Would Not Be God at All.
  17. 17That Creatures are Mutable and God Alone Immutable.
  18. 18He Does Not Yet Fully Understand the Saying of John, that ‘The Word Was Made Flesh.’
  19. 19That God and the Angels Rejoice More on the Return of One Sinner Than of Many Just Persons.
  20. 20The Conversation with Alypius Being Ended, He Retires to the Garden, Whither His Friend Follows Him.
  21. 21He Praises God, the Author of Safety, and Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, Acknowledging His Own Wickedness.
  22. 22Of the Church Hymns Instituted at Milan; Of the Ambrosian Persecution Raised by Justina; And of the Discovery of the Bodies of Two Martyrs.
  23. 23How He Mourned His Dead Mother.
  24. 24That All Things are Manifest to God. That Confession Unto Him is Not Made by the Words of the Flesh, But of the Soul, and the Cry of Reflection.
  25. 25Of the Nature and the Amazing Power of Memory.
  26. 26In Memory There are Also Images of Things Which are Absent.
  27. 27All Wish to Rejoice in the Truth.
  28. 28About to Speak of the Temptations of the Lust of the Flesh, He First Complains of the Lust of Eating and Drinking.
  29. 29A Third Kind is ‘Pride’ Which is Pleasing to Man, Not to God.
  30. 30That Jesus Christ, at the Same Time God and Man, is the True and Most Efficacious Mediator.
  31. 31He Did Not, However, Create It by a Sounding and Passing Word.
  32. 32Neither Time Past Nor Future, But the Present Only, Really is.
  33. 33How Time May Be Measured.
  34. 34Time in the Human Mind, Which Expects, Considers, and Remembers.
  35. 35From the Formlessness of Matter, the Beautiful World Has Arisen.
  36. 36What May Be Discovered to Him by God.
  37. 37He Mentions Five Explanations of the Words of Genesis I. I.
  38. 38It Behoves Interpreters, When Disagreeing Concerning Obscure Places, to Regard God the Author of Truth, and the Rule of Charity.
  39. 39Of the goodness of God explained in the creation of things, and of the Trinity as found in the first words of Genesis. The story concerning the origin of the world (Gen. I.) is allegorically explained, and he applies it to those things which God works for sanctified and blessed man. Finally, he makes an end of this work, having implored eternal rest from God.
  40. 40That Nothing Whatever, Short of God, Can Yield to the Rational Creature a Happy Rest.
  41. 41That No One But the Unchangeable Light Knows Himself.
  42. 42He Explains the Divine Image (Ver. 26) of the Renewal of the Mind.
  43. 43Although It is Said Eight Times that ‘God Saw that It Was Good,’ Yet Time Has No Relation to God and His Word.
  44. 44Of Rest in God Who Ever Worketh, and Yet is Ever at Rest.