Confessions of St. Augustine

Book II

(i) 1. I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul: not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me; and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things....

(In his sixteenth year, lured on by the praise of sin common in the company of young men with whom he associated, he seduced a girl—and subsequently became the father of an illegitimate son, whom he loved greatly. “To whom tell I this? not to Thee, my God; but before Thee to mine own kind, even to that small portion of mankind as may light upon these writings of mine. And to what purpose? that whosoever reads this may think out of what depths we are to cry unto Thee. For what is nearer to Thine ears than a confessing heart, and a life of faith?” His parents did not help him, did not seek to have him marry: “Neither did the mother of my flesh, as she advised me to chastity, so heed what she had heard of me from her husband as to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection what she felt to be pestilent at present, and for the future dangerous. She heeded not this, for she feared lest a wife should prove a clog and hindrance to my hopes. Not those hopes of the world to come, which my mother reposed in Thee; but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too desirous I should attain; my father, because he had next to no thought of Thee, and of me but vain conceits; my mother, because she accounted that those usual courses of learning would not only be no hindrance, but even some furtherance towards attaining Thee.”)