Augustine, Confessions

Book I

binding: "broke the fetters of my tongue to call on Thee"

"rein was laid loose" to allow him to sin

Book II

friendship is "eneared witha sweet tie, by reason of the unity formed of many souls

wishes someone "had put a bound to their [fleeting beauties] pleasurableness"

"And that I might cleave the faster to its very centre, the invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, for that I was easy to be seduced."

mother encourages him "to restrain within the bounds of conjugal affection"; "the reins, meantime, were slackened to me, beyond all temper of due severity"

stealing of the pears: friends bind him to sin, as well as to the good

Book III

comes to Carthage

binding: "safety I hated, and a way without snares"; "wherein I longed to be ensnared"; he "was with joy fettered with sorrow-bringing bond"

• "Thou cleansest us from our evil habits, and art merciful to their sins who confess, and hearest the groaning of the prisoner, and loosest us from the chains which we made for ourselves"

Book IV

binding of friendship: "true it cannot be, unless in such as Thou cementest together, cleaving unto Thee"

friend dies, falls into despair; "I became a great riddle to myself"

binding: "Wretched I was; and wretched is every soul bound by the friendship of perishable things."; God helps him "plucking my feet out of the snare"

language: "And even thus is our speech completed by signs giving forth a sound: but this again is not perfected unless one word pass away when it hath sounded its part, that another may succeed."

binding of the body: "For the sense of the flesh is slow, because it is the sense of the flesh; and thereby is it bounded."

binding: "Entrust Truth, whatsoever thou hast from the Truth, and thou shalt lose nothing; and they decay shall bloom again, and all they diseases be healed, and they mortal parts be reformed and renewed, and bound around thee: nor shall they lay thee whither themselves descend; but they shall stand fast with thee, and abide for ever before God, Who abideth and standeth fast for ever."

Book V

enthralled by Bishop of the Manichees, Faustus

"cleaving unto Thee"

binding: Faustus snares him; "Thus, that Faustus, to so many a snare of death, had now neither willing nor witting it, begun to loosen that wherein I was taken."

"that bond of original sin"

"I joined myself to those deciving and decived 'holy ones'"

"a door of safe keeping around my lips"

binding: is God bound by a body?

• "it seemed to me very unseemly to believe Thee to have the shape of human flesh, and to be bounded by the bodily lineaments of our members."
• "I was constrained to confess Thee bounded; than if on all sides I should imagine thee to be bounded by the form of a human body."

Book VI

Ambrose: "But when he was reading, his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest." -- might have done it to "preserve his voice" (which was weak")

see also this book on the boundaries of God's body

reading; "For now what things, sounding strangely in the Scripture, were wont to offend me, having heard divers of them expounded satisfactorily, I referred to the depth of the mysteries, and its authority appeared to me the more venerable, and more worthy of religious credence, in that, while it lay open to all to read, it reserved the majesty of its mysteries within its profounder meaning, stooping to all in the great plainness of its words and lowliness of its style, yet calling forth the intensest application of such as are not light of heart; that so it might receive all in its open bosom, and through narrow passages waft over towards Thee some few, yet many more than if it stood not aloft on such a height of authority, nor drew multitudes within its bosom by its holy lowliness."

binding: "Let my soul cleave unto Thee, now that Thou hast freed it fro that fast-holding birdlime of death."

example of the student Alypius who resists going to gladiator show with his friends; once there, though, becomes as bloodthirsty as them; later is mistakenly accused of being a thief

binding: Alypius cleaves to Augustin "by a most strong tie"

binding: "Alypius indeed kept me from marrying; alleging that so could we by no means with undistracted leisure live together in the love of wisdom, as we had long desired. For himself was even then most pure in this point, so that it was wonderful; and that the more, since in the outset of his youth he had entered into that course, but had not stuck fast therein; rather had he felt remorse and revolting at it, living thenceforth until now most continently. But I opposed him with the examples of those who as married men had cherished wisdom, and served God acceptably, and retained their friends, and loved them faithfully. Of whose greatness of spirit I was far short; and bound with the disease of the flesh, and its deadly sweetness, drew along my chain, dreading to be loosed, and as if my wound had been fretted, put back his good persuasions, as it were the hand of one that would unchain me. Moreover, by me did the serpent speak unto Alypius himself, by my tongue weaving and laying in his path pleasurable snares, wherein his virtuous and free feet might be entangled."

wants to get married; Alypius doesn't want him to; but Augustine describes himself as "bound with the disease of the flesh" and "drew along my chain, dreading to be loosed, and as if my would had been fretted, put back his good persuasions, as it were the hand of one that would unchain me.";

doesn't want to get "entangled" again in the "snares" of pleasure; Alypius is "free from that chain" and therefore "amazed at my thraldom"

"insatiable appetite" for sex held Augustine captive; "an admiring wonder"/curiosity was leading Alypius captive

Augustine's concubine is "torn from my side" and "my heart which clave unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding"