The Confessions — Book 3

St. Augustine of Hippo

1. 0. Greeting
2. 1. Deluded by an Insane Love, He, Though Foul and Dishonourable, Desires to Be Thought Elegant and Urbane.
3. 2. In Public Spectacles He is Moved by an Empty Compassion. He is Attacked by a Troublesome Spiritual Disease.
4. 3. Not Even When at Church Does He Suppress His Desires. In the School of Rhetoric He Abhors the Acts of the Subverters.
5. 4. In the Nineteenth Year of His Age (His Father Having Died Two Years Before) He is Led by the Hortensius Of Cicero to Philosophy, To God, and a Better Mode of Thinking.
6. 5. He Rejects the Sacred Scriptures as Too Simple, and as Not to Be Compared with the Dignity of Tully.
7. 6. Deceived by His Own Fault, He Falls into the Errors of the Manichæans, Who Gloried in the True Knowledge of God and in a Thorough Examination of Things.
8. 7. He Attacks the Doctrine of the Manichæans Concerning Evil, God, and the Righteousness of the Patriarchs.
9. 8. He Argues Against the Same as to the Reason of Offences.
10. 9. That the Judgment of God and Men as to Human Acts of Violence, is Different.
11. 10. He Reproves the Triflings of the Manichæans as to the Fruits of the Earth.
12. 11. He Refers to the Tears, and the Memorable Dream Concerning Her Son, Granted by God to His Mother.
13. 12. The Excellent Answer of the Bishop When Referred to by His Mother as to the Conversion of Her Son.

Of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth years of his age, passed at Carthage, when, having completed his course of studies, he is caught in the snares of a licentious passion, and falls into the errors of the Manichæans.