already found, and to the pleasures of the body, though spread around me at my will.  But I, wretched, most wretched, in the very beginning 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.

But when a deep consideration had, from the secret bottom of my soul, drawn together and heaped up all my misery in the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, bringing a mighty shower of tears.  And that I might pour it forth wholly in its natural expressions, I rose from Alypius:  solitude was suggested to me as fitter for the business of weeping; and I retired so far that even his presence could not be a burden to me.  Thus was it then with me, and he perceived something of it; for something I suppose he had spoken, wherein the tones of my voice appeared choked with weeping, and so had risen up.  He then remained where we were sitting, most extremely astonished.  I cast myself down I know not how, under a fig-tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice to thee.  And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto thee:—­“And thou, O Lord, how long? how long, Lord, wilt thou be angry—­forever?  Remember not our former iniquities,” for I felt that I was held by them.  I sent up these sorrowful words:  “How long? how long?  To-morrow and to-morrow?  Why not now? why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness?”

CONSOLATION

From the ‘Confessions’

So was I speaking, and weeping, in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when lo!  I heard from a neighboring house a voice, as of boy or girl (I could not tell which), chanting and oft repeating, “Take up and read; take up and read.”  Instantly my countenance altered, and I began to think most intently whether any were wont in any kind of play to sing such words, nor could I remember ever to have heard the like.  So, checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God, to open the book and read the first chapter I should find.  Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Epistles when I arose thence.  I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell:—­“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.”  No further would I read; nor heeded I, for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light, as it were, of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.