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Full Title
The confessions of S. Augustine: in ten books.
Author
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. Woodroffe, Paul, ill. Housman, Clemence, ill. Housman, Lawrence. Chivers, Cedric, Book designer.
Date Added
10 January 2014
Language
English
Publish Date
1900
Publisher
London : Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & Co. Ltd.
Source
Contributions from Augustinian Theologians and Scholars
Topic
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. Catholic Church > Algeria > Hippo (Extinct city) > Bishops > Biography. Christian saints > Algeria > Hippo (Extinct city) > Biography. Hippo (Extinct city) > Biography.
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OCR
not, and there tasteth, what eating diminisheth not,
and there clingeth, what satiety divorceth not. This
is it which I love, when I love my God.
And what is this? I asked the earth, and it an-
swered me, ‘*I am not He;”’ and whatsoever are in
it, confessed the same. I asked the sea and the
deeps, and the living creeping things, and they
answered, **We are not thy God, seek above us.”
Iasked the moving air; and the whole air with his
inhabitants answered, ‘‘ Anaximenes was deceived,
Iam not. God.” I asked the heavens, sun, moon,
Stars, ‘‘ Nor (say they) are we the God whom thou
seekest.” And I replied unto all the things which
encompass the door of my flesh; ‘ Ye have told me
of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something
of Him.” And they cried out with a loud voice,
“He made us.’”’ My questioning them, was my
thoughts on them: and their form of beauty gave
the answer. And I turned myself unto myself, and
said to myself, ‘‘ Who art thou?’”’? And I answered,
“Aman.” And behold, in me there present them-
selves to me soul, and body, one without, the other
within. By which of these ought I toseek my God?
Thad sought Him in the body from earth to heaven,
so far as I could send messengers, the beams of
mine eyes. But the better is the inner, for to it as
presiding and judging, all the bodily messengers
reported the answers of heaven and earth, and all
things therein, who said, ‘« We are not God, but He
made us.” These things did my inner man know by
the ministry of the outer: I the inner, knew them ;
I, the mind, through the senses of my body. I
asked the whole frame of the world about my God;
and it answered me, ‘I am not He, but He made
me,”
Is not this corporeal figure apparent to all whose
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