John Henry Newman 1801-1890
The Church of the Fathers
Capita selecta
Chapter 8. Conversion of
Augustine
"Thou hast chastised me and I was instructed, as a steer unaccustomed to the yoke. Convert me, and I shall be converted, for Thou art the Lord my God. For after Thou didst convert me, I did penance, and after Thou didst show unto me, I struck my thigh. I am confounded and ashamed, because I have borne the reproach of my youth."
1.
A CHANCE
reader may ask, What was the history of that celebrated Father, whose last days
were the subject of my last chapter? What had his life been, what his early
years, what his labours? Surely he was no ordinary man, whose end, in all its
circumstances, is so impressive. We may answer in a few words, that Augustine
was the son of a pious mother, who had the pain of witnessing, for many years,
his wanderings in doubt and unbelief, who prayed incessantly for his
conversion, and at length was blessed with the sight of it. From early youth he
had given himself up to a course of life quite inconsistent with the profession
of a catechumen, into which he had been admitted in infancy. How far he had
fallen into any great excesses is doubtful. He uses language of himself which
may have the worst of meanings, but may, on the other hand, be but the
expression of deep repentance and spiritual sensitiveness. In his twentieth
year he embraced the Manichæan heresy, in which he continued nine years.
Towards the end of that time, leaving Africa, his native country, first for
Rome, then for Milan, he fell in with St. Ambrose; and his conversion and
baptism followed in the course of his thirty-fourth year. This memorable event,
his conversion, has been celebrated in the Western Church from early times,
being the only event of the kind thus distinguished, excepting the conversion
of St. Paul.
His life had
been for many years one of great anxiety and discomfort, the life of one
dissatisfied with himself, and despairing of finding the truth. Men of ordinary
minds are not so circumstanced as to feel the misery of irreligion. That misery
consists in the perverted and discordant action of the various faculties and
functions of the soul, which have lost their legitimate governing power, and
are unable to regain it, except at the hands of their Maker. Now the run of
irreligious men do not suffer in any great degree from this disorder, and are
not miserable; they have neither great talents nor strong passions; they have
not within them the materials of rebellion in such measure as to threaten their
peace. They follow their own wishes, they yield to the bent of the moment, they
act on inclination, not on principle, but their motive powers are neither
strong nor various enough to be troublesome. Their minds are in no sense under
rule; but anarchy is not in their case a state of confusion, but of deadness;
not unlike the internal condition as it is reported of eastern cities and
provinces at present, in which, though the government is weak or null, the body
politic goes on without any great embarrassment or collision of its members one
with another, by the force of inveterate habit. It is very different when the
moral and intellectual principles are vigorous, active, and developed. Then, if
the governing power be feeble, all the subordinates are in the position of
rebels in arms; and what the state of a mind is under such circumstances, the
analogy of a civil community will suggest to us. Then we have before us the
melancholy spectacle of high aspirations without an aim, a hunger of the soul
unsatisfied, and a never-ending restlessness and inward warfare of its various
faculties. Gifted minds, if not submitted to the rightful authority of
religion, become the most unhappy and the most mischievous. They need both an
object to feed upon, and the power of self-mastery; and the love of their
Maker, and nothing but it, supplies both the one and the other. We have seen in
our own day, in the case of a popular poet, an impressive instance of a great genius
throwing off the fear of God, seeking for happiness in the creature, roaming
unsatisfied from one object to another, breaking his soul upon itself, and
bitterly confessing and imparting his wretchedness to all around him. I have no
wish at all to compare him to St. Augustine; indeed, if we may say it without
presumption, the very different termination of their trial seems to indicate
some great difference in their respective modes of encountering it. The one
dies of premature decay, to all appearance, a hardened infidel; and if he is
still to have a name, will live in the mouths of men by writings at once
blasphemous and immoral: the other is a Saint and Doctor of the Church. Each
makes confessions, the one to the saints, the other to the powers of evil. And
does not the difference of the two discover itself in some measure, even to our
eyes, in the very history of their wanderings and pinings? At least, there is
no appearance in St. Augustine's case of that dreadful haughtiness, sullenness,
love of singularity, vanity, irritability, and misanthropy, which were too
certainly the characteristics of our own countryman. Augustine was, as his
early history shows, a man of affectionate and tender feelings, and open and
amiable temper; and, above all, he sought for some excellence external to his
own mind, instead of concentrating all his contemplations on himself.
