Augustine's Conversion Story: "Take Up and Read" in Book 8

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Augustine was converted in the summer of 386, in a small garden behind the house where he was staying in Milan. He was about thirty-two, a successful professor of rhetoric, and he already believed that the Christian faith was true. What held him back was not doubt but habit. Weeping under a fig tree, he heard a child's voice from a nearby house chanting "Take up and read." He opened Paul's letters, read Romans 13:13–14, and in that moment, he says, "all the darkness of doubt vanished away."

He tells the story in Book VIII of The Confessions. Every quotation below is taken word for word from the free edition in TheWay Library, E. B. Pusey's translation, and you can read the whole account in Book VIII.

Where he stood before the garden

By the time Book VIII opens, Augustine's mind had come a long way. He had left the Manichees. Through Ambrose's preaching he had learned that the Scriptures could be defended. In Book VII the Platonist philosophers had taught him to think of God as spirit and of evil as a falling away from the good, and he had found in Christ the Mediator the way to God that the philosophers lacked. He had started reading Paul.

So the problem was no longer what to believe. He puts it plainly:

But I had now found the goodly pearl, which, selling all that I had, I ought to have bought, and I hesitated.
The Confessions, Book VIII

What he couldn't give up was his career, and above all the sexual habits that had ruled him since his teens.

A will in chains

Augustine visited Simplicianus, an older Christian who had been a spiritual father to Ambrose. Simplicianus told him about Victorinus, a famous Roman teacher who had defended idol worship for years, then came to Christ late in life and confessed his faith in public. Augustine longed to do the same, but he couldn't:

Which thing I was sighing for, bound as I was, not with another's irons, but by my own iron will. My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me.
The Confessions, Book VIII

He goes on to describe how the chain was forged, link by link:

For of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity.
The Confessions, Book VIII

He compared himself to a man who knows he should get up in the morning and keeps rolling back into sleep. God called, "Awake, thou that sleepest," and all he could answer was "Anon, anon," "presently," "leave me but a little." And he admits the prayer he had prayed as a young man:

Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.
The Confessions, Book VIII

The visit of Pontitianus

One day a fellow African named Pontitianus, an official at the emperor's court, came to see Augustine and his friend Alypius. He noticed a book of Paul's letters on the table and was glad, because he was a believer. He told them about Antony, the Egyptian monk who had given away everything to follow Christ, and about two of his own colleagues who had found a book of Antony's life, read it, and given up their careers on the spot to serve God.

As Pontitianus talked, Augustine saw himself as he was:

Thou, O Lord, while he was speaking, didst turn me round towards myself, taking me from behind my back where I had placed me, unwilling to observe myself; and setting me before my face, that I might see how foul I was.
The Confessions, Book VIII

When the visitor left, Augustine turned on Alypius:

The unlearned start up and take heaven by force, and we with our learning, and without heart, lo, where we wallow in flesh and blood!
The Confessions, Book VIII

In the garden

Augustine hurried out into the garden, and Alypius followed. There he fought with himself. He tore his hair and beat his forehead. His old pleasures seemed to tug at his clothes and whisper to him:

They plucked my fleshy garment, and whispered softly, "Dost thou cast us off? and from that moment shall we no more be with thee for ever?"
The Confessions, Book VIII

On the other side he pictured all the men and women who had lived pure lives by God's strength, as if they were calling to him:

Cast thyself upon Him, fear not He will not withdraw Himself that thou shouldest fall; cast thyself fearlessly upon Him, He will receive, and will heal thee.
The Confessions, Book VIII

At last the tears came. He moved away from Alypius so he could weep alone, and threw himself down under a fig tree:

I sent up these sorrowful words: How long, how long, "tomorrow, and tomorrow?" Why not now? why not is there this hour an end to my uncleanness?
The Confessions, Book VIII

"Take up and read"

Then came the moment the whole book has been building toward:

I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read."
The Confessions, Book VIII

He couldn't remember any children's game with those words. He remembered that Antony had been converted by hearing a Gospel verse read as if it were spoken to him alone. So he took the voice as a command from God, went back to where he had left the book of Paul's letters, and opened it:

I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.
The Confessions, Book VIII

Romans 13:13–14

The verses Augustine read are these, in the King James Version:

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Romans 13:13-14

It is easy to see why these words broke through. They named the very sins that had held him, and they did not tell him to try harder. They told him to put on Christ. The change was not a new resolution of his own will but a gift. That is the thread running through the whole Confessions, and the reason Augustine wrote it as a prayer of thanks.

Alypius, and Monica's joy

Augustine marked the page and told Alypius. Alypius asked to see it, read the next verse, "Him that is weak in the faith, receive," took it for himself, and joined Augustine without delay. The two went in to tell Monica, who had prayed for her son for years:

Thence we go in to my mother; we tell her; she rejoiceth: we relate in order how it took place; she leaps for joy, and triumpheth, and blesseth Thee, Who are able to do above that which we ask or think.
The Confessions, Book VIII

What came after

Augustine finished the school term, gave up his post, and spent the next months at a friend's country house praying through the Psalms. At Easter the following year he was baptized in Milan with Alypius and his son. Book IX tells that story and the death of Monica soon after. You can follow the rest of the book in our summary of all 13 books, read more of his life in Who Was Augustine of Hippo?, or browse the best quotes from the Confessions.

Best of all, read the conversion story itself. It's one of the most honest pages in Christian writing, and it takes only a short sitting. Open The Confessions of St. Augustine at Book VIII.