Thy faith, she even more lovingly travailed in birth of my salvation),
would in eager haste have provided for my consecration and cleansing
by the health-giving sacraments, confessing Thee, Lord Jesus, for
the remission of sins, unless I had suddenly recovered. And so, as
if I must needs be again polluted should I live, my cleansing was
deferred, because the defilements of sin would, after that washing,
bring greater and more perilous guilt. I then already believed: and my
mother, and the whole household, except my father: yet did not he
prevail over the power of my mother's piety in me, that as he did
not yet believe, so neither should I. For it was her earnest care that
Thou my God, rather than he, shouldest be my father; and in this
Thou didst aid her to prevail over her husband, whom she, the
better, obeyed, therein also obeying Thee, who hast so commanded.

I beseech Thee, my God, I would fain know, if so Thou willest, for
what purpose my baptism was then deferred? was it for my good that the
rein was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for me to sin? or was it not
laid loose? If not, why does it still echo in our ears on all sides,
"Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptised?"
but as to bodily health, no one says, "Let him be worse wounded, for
he is not yet healed." How much better then, had I been at once
healed; and then, by my friends' and my own, my soul's recovered
health had been kept safe in Thy keeping who gavest it. Better
truly. But how many and great waves of temptation seemed to hang
over me after my boyhood! These my mother foresaw; and preferred to
expose to them the clay whence I might afterwards be moulded, than the
very cast, when made.

In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth),
I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced; and