philosophers, and still more those who have devoted their lives to
arousing the love of sacred study, have been strong above all else
in the beauty of chastity.

Thus did it come to pass that while I was utterly absorbed in pride
and sensuality, divine grace, the cure for both diseases, was
forced upon me, even though I, forsooth, would fain have shunned
it. First was I punished for my sensuality, and then for my pride.
For my sensuality I lost those things whereby I practiced it; for
my pride, engendered in me by my knowledge of letters--and it is
even as the Apostle said: "Knowledge puffeth itself up" (I Cor.
viii, 1)--I knew the humiliation of seeing burned the very book in
which I most gloried. And now it is my desire that you should know
the stories of these two happenings, understanding them more truly
from learning the very facts than from hearing what is spoken of
them, and in the order in which they came about. Because I had ever
held in abhorrence the foulness of prostitutes, because I had
diligently kept myself from all excesses and from association with
the women of noble birth who attended the school, because I knew so
little of the common talk of ordinary people, perverse and subtly
flattering chance gave birth to an occasion for casting me lightly
down from the heights of my own exaltation. Nay, in such case not
even divine goodness could redeem one who, having been so proud,
was brought to such shame, were it not for the blessed gift of
grace.



CHAPTER VI