Chapter III.—Having Heard
Faustus, the Most Learned Bishop of the Manichæans, He Discerns
that God, the Author Both of Things Animate and Inanimate, Chiefly
Has Care for the Humble.
3. Let me lay bare before my God that
twenty-ninth year of my age. There had at this time come to
Carthage a certain bishop of the Manichæans, by name Faustus, a
great snare of the devil, and in any were entangled by him through
the allurement of his smooth speech; the which, although I did
commend, yet could I separate from the truth of those things which
I was eager to learn. Nor did I esteem the small dish of oratory so
much as the science, which this their so praised Faustus placed
before me to feed upon. Fame, indeed, had before spoken of him to
me, as most skilled in all becoming learning, and pre-eminently
skilled in the liberal sciences. And as I had read and retained in
memory many injunctions of the philosophers, I used to compare some
teachings of theirs with those long fables of the Manichæans and
the former things which they declared, who could only prevail so
far as to estimate this lower world, while its lord they could by
no means find out, seemed to me the more probable. For
Thou art great, O Lord, and hast respect unto the lowly, but the
proud Thou knowest afar off.” Nor dost Thou draw near but to the
contrite heart, nor art Thou
found by the proud,—not even could they number by
cunning skill the stars and the sand, and measure the starry
regions, and trace the courses of the planets.
4. For with their understanding and the
capacity which Thou hast bestowed upon them they search out these
things; and much have they found out, and foretold many years
before,—the eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and moon, on
what day, at what hour, and from how many particular points they
were likely to come. Nor did their calculation fail them; and it
came to pass even as they foretold. And they wrote down the rules
found out, which are read at this day; and from these others
foretell in what year and in what month of the year, and on what
day of the month, and at what hour of the day, and at what quarter
of its light, either moon or sun is to be eclipsed, and thus it
shall be even as it is foretold. And men who are ignorant of these
things marvel and are amazed, and they that know them exult and are
exalted; and by an impious pride, departing from Thee, and
forsaking Thy light, they foretell a failure of the sun’s light
which is likely to occur so long before, but see not their own, which is now present. For they seek not religiously whence they have the ability where-with they seek out these things. And finding that Thou hast made them, they give not themselves up to Thee, that Thou mayest preserve what Thou hast made, nor sacrifice themselves to Thee, even such as they have made themselves to be; nor do they slay their own pride, as fowls of the air, nor their own curiosities, by which (like the fishes of the sea) they wander over the unknown paths of the abyss, nor their own extravagance, as the “beasts of the field,” that Thou, Lord, “a consuming fire,” mayest burn up their lifeless cares and renew them immortally.