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The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books
Chapter XV.--He Dismisses One Mistress, and Chooses Another.
25. Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding. And she went back to Africa, making a vow unto Thee never to know another man, leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy one, who could not imitate a woman, impatient of delay, since it was not until two years' time I was to obtain her I sought,--being not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust,--procured another (not a wife, though), that so by the bondage of a lasting habit the disease of my soul might be nursed up, and kept up in its vigour, or even increased, into the kingdom of marriage. Nor was that wound of mine as yet cured which had been caused by the separation from my former mistress, but after inflammation and most acute anguish it mortified, 1 and the pain became numbed, but more desperate.
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In his De Natura Con. Manich. he has the same idea. He is speaking of the evil that has no pain, and remarks: "Likewise in the body, better is a wound with pain than putrefaction without pain, which is specially styled corruption;" and the same idea is embodied in the extract from Caird's Sermons, on p. 5, note 7. ↩
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Confessiones (PL)
CAPUT XV. In locum discedentis concubinae alia succedit.
25. Interea peccata mea multiplicabantur, et avulsa [Col. 0732] a latere meo tanquam impedimento conjugii, cum qua cubare solitus eram, cor ubi adhaerebat, concisum et vulneratum mihi erat, et trahebat sanguinem. Et illa in Africam redierat, vovens tibi alium se virum nescituram, relicto apud me naturali ex illa filio meo. At ego infelix nec feminae imitator, dilationis impatiens, tanquam post biennium accepturus eam quam petebam, quia non amator conjugii sed libidinis servus eram; procuravi aliam, non utique conjugem; quo tanquam sustentaretur et perduceretur vel integer vel auctior morbus animae meae, satellitio perdurantis consuetudinis, in regnum uxorium. Nec sanabatur vulnus illud meum quod prioris praecisione factum fuerat, sed post fervorem doloremque acerrimum putrescebat, et quasi frigidius, sed desperatius dolebat.