Book III

Augustine describes his arrival in Carthage as entering into a realm of unholy loves where he paradoxically loved loving itself while hating safety, driven by a spiritual hunger for God that he failed to recognize and that manifested as bodily desire.

Augustine reflects on how he defiled the pure fountain of friendship by mixing it with concupiscence, leading to a state of being bound with sorrow and tormented by jealousy, suspicions, and fears.

Augustine questions the psychological paradox of theater-goers who desire to experience sadness by watching tragic plays, finding pleasure in manufactured sorrow, which he views as a form of miserable madness.

Augustine distinguishes between genuine compassion (which wishes for the absence of suffering) and the theater-goer's corrupted compassion, which delights in watching fictional miseries without any obligation to relieve them.

Augustine admits that in his past he took pleasure in theatrical depictions of wickedness and sorrow, but now he judges that true mercy lies in pitying those who rejoice in wickedness rather than those who mourn the loss of sinful pleasures.

Augustine compares his love of theatrical grief to an infection contracted by straying from God's flock, describing it as a kind of surface scratching that leads to deep spiritual inflammation and corruption.

Augustine describes how his sacrilegious curiosity, after forsaking God, led him to demonic service and grave iniquities, even while God's Church celebrated, and how he persisted in this with a stiff neck.

Augustine confesses that his studies in rhetoric were aimed at worldly success in courts of litigation, in which he became chief of his school and took pride, though he maintained some distance from the worst excesses of devilish 'Subverters' among his peers.

Augustine recounts how reading Cicero's Hortensius, which exhorts to philosophy, transformed his affections and made vain hopes worthless to him, kindling a burning desire for wisdom and prompting him to turn toward God.

Augustine describes how the book inflamed him with love of wisdom (philosophy), but he warns that some seduce through false philosophy, and he notes that though he was stirred toward wisdom itself, the absence of Christ's name prevented complete conversion.

Augustine turns to the holy Scriptures seeking understanding but finds them incomprehensible to his proud mind, as their lowly access and lofty mysteries require spiritual humility that his swollen pride refuses.

Augustine describes the Manichaeans as proudly carnal speakers who invoked divine names but possessed no truth in their hearts, offering false echoes of truth instead of truth itself.

Augustine explains how the Manichaeans, claiming to offer truth, actually fed him with corporeal fantasies about the sun, moon, and elements instead of nourishing his soul's true hunger for God himself.

Augustine uses the image of food in dreams to explain how the Manichaean doctrines, unlike actual bodies or true visions, provided no real nourishment, leaving him spiritually starved despite appearing to feed.

Augustine argues that the fables of poets and grammarians, and even the fictional tale of Medea flying, are better than the Manichaean system because the former can be converted to true lessons while the latter are believed as truth.

Augustine describes his seduction through sensual perception, comparing himself to the foolish woman in Proverbs sitting at her door offering stolen pleasures, finding him dwelling in the eye of the flesh.

Augustine confesses that he was persuaded by Manichaean questions about the origin of evil and God's nature, which he could not answer because he understood neither that evil is privation of good nor that God is spirit.

Augustine acknowledges his failure to understand that true righteousness judges by God's eternal law rather than custom, and that different times and circumstances require different applications of the unchanging law.

Augustine provides multiple examples (armor parts, business hours, household servants, household rules) to show how one principle of justice manifests differently according to time, place, person, and circumstance.

Augustine explains that just as the art of poetry has one unchanging principle yet allows different feet in different places and meters, so too divine righteousness is unchanging yet prescribes different commands for different times.

Augustine confesses that in his blindness he wrongly censured the holy fathers and prophets for their actions and foresightings, not understanding that God commanded and revealed through them.

Augustine establishes that the command to love God with all one's heart and soul and neighbor as oneself is eternally valid everywhere and always, and unnatural offenses like sodomy are universally condemnable.

Augustine argues that offenses against custom should be avoided according to prevailing customs, but when God commands something against custom, obedience to God supersedes obedience to human convention.

Augustine explains that just as greater human authority is obeyed over lesser, God's authority supersedes all human authority, and we must obey Him unhesitatingly in all commands.

Augustine catalogs violent and injurious acts as springing from the lust of the flesh, eye, or power—either singly or combined—and they all violate God's Ten Commandments.

Augustine argues that since God cannot be defiled or harmed, all sin is avenged because sinners commit iniquity against themselves, corrupting and perverting their own nature by abandoning God.

Augustine teaches that by humble devoutness we return to God, who cleanses us of evil habits and frees us from self-made chains if we confess rather than arrogantly claim false liberty.

Augustine distinguishes between sins of those making spiritual progress, who should be corrected by the rule of perfection while the persons are commended for future fruit, like green growing corn.

Augustine asserts that many actions condemned by men are approved by God, and many praised by men are condemned by God, because God considers the inner mind of the doer and the hidden exigency of the time.

Augustine confesses that his scoffing at God's servants and prophets resulted in being scoffed at by God, as he was drawn step by step into absurd Manichaean beliefs about fig trees weeping and divine particles.

Augustine describes the Manichaean belief that more mercy should be shown to fruits of the earth than to humans, such that a hungry non-Manichaean could not be given food without spiritual contamination.

Augustine describes how God stretched down His hand and drew him from profound darkness, answering his mother Monica's faithful tears and weeping, which showed her discernment of his spiritual death.

Augustine relates Monica's dream in which she stood on a wooden rule while a cheerful shining youth instructed her to observe that where she was, Augustine was also, which comforted her in her grief.

When Augustine tried to misinterpret the vision to mean she would become like him, Monica immediately and without hesitation corrected him, seeing the true meaning that where she stood, he would also stand.

Augustine testifies that Monica, a chaste and godly widow, continued unceasing prayer and weeping at all hours for nine years while Augustine wallowed in the mire of Manichaean darkness.

Augustine recounts how a Bishop, whom Monica entreated to refute Augustine's errors, wisely refused, saying Augustine was unteachable due to his puffed-up pride in his newfound heresy.

The Bishop shares that he himself, as a child, was consigned to the Manichaeans by his mother, but through reading their books without anyone's argument, he saw their error and avoided it.

When Monica persisted in her pleas despite the Bishop's refusal, he consoled her with the heavenly-sounding assurance that 'the son of these tears shall not perish,' which Monica took as a divine answer.