x» 
+ CONTENTS + + 
INTRODUCTION - ix 
By Harold C. Gardiner, S.J. 
BOOK I : 1 
Confessions of the greatness and unsearchableness of Ged, oi 
Cod’s mercies in infancy and boyhood, and human wilfulness? 
of his own sins of idleness, abuse of his studies, and of God’s gifts 
up to his fifteenth year. 
. BOOK II . 20 
Object of these Confessions. Further ills of idleness developed in 
his sixteenth year. Evils of ill society, which betrayed him into 
theft. 
BOOK III - 30 
His residence at Carthage from his seventeenth to his nineteenth 
year. Source of his disorders. Love of shows. Advance in studies, 
and love of wisdom. Distaste for Scripture. Led astray to the 
Manicheeans. Refutation of some of their tencts. Grief of his 
mother Monnica at his heresy, and prayers for his conversion. 
Her vision from God, and answer through a Bishop. 
BOOK IV . 45 
Augustine’s life from nineteen to eight and twenty; himself a 
Manichzan, and seducing others to the same heresy; partial 
obedience amidst vanity and sin; consulting astrologers, only 
partially shaken herein: loss of an early friend, who is converted 
by being baptised when in a swoon; reflections on grief, on real 
and unreal friendship, and love of fame; writes on “the fair and 
fit,” yet cannot rightly, since he entertained wrong notions of 
God: and so even his knowledge he applied ill.