ADVERTISEMENT. IT is to be borne in mind that the Author of these Confessions was, during the whole period to which they refer, unbaptized-in other words, not a Christian. His mother had been given in marriage to one, who was altogether a heathen, until long after Augustine's birth, (for in his sixteenth year his father was but recently a Catechumen, b. ii. § 6,) and, as a heathen, lived in heathenish sin; and himself, although in infancy made a Catechumen, had fallen into a sect, which could in no way be called Christian. Christianity, as now in India, was then every where surrounded by Heathenism, which it was gradually leavening; and there was consequently a mixed race, born of intermarriages with the heathen, or of parents who had not made up their minds to become wholly Christians, (like the "mixed multitude," which went up with Israel out of Egypt,) and who were in a sort of twilight state, seeing Christianity but very imperfectly, although the grossness of their own darkness was much mitigated. This should be borne in mind, lest any should think that S. Augustine's descriptions of himself and his comrades furnish any representation of the then state of the Christian Church, and that consequently it even then partook of the state of degradation, in which it is at this day. It also accounts for S. Augustine's mode of speaking of his past sins in terms of strong condemnation, yet, personally, of unconcern; as shocking and loathsome in themselves, but as what he had no more to do with, in that he had condemned them, and they had been washed away by Baptism. The object of the Saint apparently was to illustrate the goodness and forbearance of Almighty God in bringing him, in spite of manifold errors and infirmities, to this blessed haven of rest; that so others who were in the same state in which he had been, might "not sleep in despair, and say, 'I cannot." " Accordingly, his Confessions would close, according to his own view, at the end of the ninth book; the only events, which he relates, subsequent to his conversion and baptism, being those connected with his mother's death, to whose prayers he had been given. It is evidently not without reluctance, that in the tenth book, in compliance with the importunity of some of the brethren, he enters at all into the subject "of what he then was" at the interval of ten years; nor does he enter upon it, without much previous questioning, and at last touches upon it only in the most cursory manner. In this respect the Confessions of S. Augustine will be found to differ most materially from modern Autobiographies, in which individuals often dwell on their own feelings and experiences in a spirit quite inconsistent with Christian modesty and humility. The three last books of the volume usually published as S. Augustine's Confessions consist entirely of a commentary on the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and do not form any part of the Confessions, which are complete in the present volume. CONTENTS. THE FIRST BOOK. Confessions of the greatness and unsearchableness of God, of God's mercies in infancy and boyhood, and human wilful- ness; of his own sins of idleness, abuse of his studies, and Object of these Confessions. Further ills of idleness developed |