Into Danae's bosom...  

     With a woman to intrigue."

     See how he excites himself to lust, as if by a heavenly 
authority, when he says:

          "Great Jove, 

     Who shakes the highest heavens with his thunder; 

     Shall I, poor mortal man, not do the same?

     I've done it, and with all my heart, I'm glad."[32]

     These words are not learned one whit more easily because of 
this vileness, but through them the vileness is more boldly 
perpetrated.  I do not blame the words, for they are, as it were, 
choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wine of error 
which was poured out to us by teachers already drunk.  And, unless 
we also drank we were beaten, without liberty of appeal to a sober 
judge.  And yet, O my God, in whose presence I can now with 
security recall this, I learned these things willingly and with 
delight, and for it I was called a boy of good promise.

                         CHAPTER XVII

     27.  Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those 
talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them.  
For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for 
in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes.  
The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she 
raged and sorrowed that she could not

          "Bar off Italy

     From all the approaches of the Teucrian king."[33]

     I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words.  Yet 
we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic 
fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse.  
In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most strikingly 
reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the 
"character" of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the 
most suitable language.  What is it now to me, O my true Life, my 
God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my 
classmates and fellow students?  Actually, was not all that smoke 
and wind?  Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have 
exercised my wit and tongue?  Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises 
might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by thy Scriptures; 
and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a 
shameful prey to the spirits of the air.  For there is more than 
one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels.

                         CHAPTER XVIII

     28.  But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward 
vanity and was estranged from thee, O my God, when men were held 
up as models to me who, when relating a deed of theirs -- not in 
itself evil -- were covered with confusion if found guilty of a 
barbarism or a solecism; but who could tell of their own 
licentiousness and be applauded for it, so long as they did it in 
a full and ornate oration of well-chosen words.  Thou seest all 
this, O Lord, and dost keep silence -- "long-suffering, and 
plenteous in mercy and truth"[34] as thou art.  Wilt thou keep 
silence forever?  Even now thou drawest from that vast deep the 
soul that seeks thee and thirsts after thy delight, whose "heart 
said unto thee, ÔI have sought thy face; thy face, Lord, will I 
seek.'"[35] For I was far from thy face in the dark shadows of 
passion.  For it is not by our feet, nor by change of place, that 
we either turn from thee or return to thee.  That younger son did 
not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on visible 
wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might 
prodigally waste all that thou didst give him when he set out.[36] 
A kind Father when thou gavest; and kinder still when he returned 
destitute!  To be wanton, that is to say, to be darkened in heart 
-- this is to be far from thy face.

     29.  Look down, O Lord God, and see patiently, as thou art 
wont to do, how diligently the sons of men observe the 
conventional rules of letters and syllables, taught them by those 
who learned their letters beforehand, while they neglect the 
eternal rules of everlasting salvation taught by thee.  They carry 
it so far that if he who practices or teaches the established 
rules of pronunciation should speak (contrary to grammatical 
usage) without aspirating the first syllable of "hominem" 
["ominem," and thus make it "a 'uman being"], he will offend men 
more than if he, a human being, were to _hate_ another human being 
contrary to thy commandments.  It is as if he should feel that 
there is an enemy who could be more destructive to himself than 
that hatred which excites him against his fellow man; or that he 
could destroy him whom he hates more completely than he destroys 
his own soul by this same hatred.  Now, obviously, there is no 
knowledge of letters more innate than the writing of conscience -- 
against doing unto another what one would not have done to 
himself.

     How mysterious thou art, who "dwellest on high"[37] in 
silence.  O thou, the only great God, who by an unwearied law