"
_Haeret letalis arundo_!
By these passions his conversion was delayed, the carnal and spiritual
wills fighting against each other within him. "Give me chastity and
continency, O Lord," he would pray, "but do not give it yet," and perhaps
this is the frankest of the confessions of Saint Augustine. In the midst
of this war of the spirit and the flesh, "Behold I heard a voyce, as if
it had been of some boy or girl from some house not farre off, uttering
and often repeating these words in a kind of singing voice,
"_Tolle, Lege; Tolle, Lege_,
Take up and read, take up and read."
So he took up a Testament, and, opening it at random, after the manner of
his Virgilian lots, read:--
"Not in surfeiting and wantonness, not in causality and uncleanness,"
with what follows. "Neither would I read any further, neither was there
any cause why I should." Saint Augustine does not, perhaps, mean us to
understand (as his translator does), that he was "miraculously called."
He knew what was right perfectly well before; the text only clinched a
resolve which he has found it very hard to make. Perhaps there was a
trifle of superstition in the matter. We never know how superstitious we
are. At all events, henceforth "I neither desired a wife, nor had I any
ambitious care of any worldly thing." He told his mother, and Monica
rejoiced, believing that now her prayers were answered.
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