When this man of yours, Simplicianus, told me the story of Victorinus, I was eager to imitate him. Indeed, this was Simplicianus' purpose in telling it to me. But when he went on to tell how, in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and rhetoric; and how Victorinus, in ready obedience to the law, chose to abandon his "school of words" rather than your Word, by which you make eloquent the tongues of the mute—he⁠a appeared to me not so much brave as happy, because he had found a reason for giving his time wholly to you. For this was what I was longing to do; but I was still bound by the iron chain of my own will. The enemy held my will fast, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me tight with it. For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. By these links, as it were, forged together—which is why I called it "a chain"—a hard bondage held me in slavery. But that new will which had begun to spring up in me freely to worship you and to enjoy you, my God, the only certain Joy, was not yet able to overcome my former willfulness, made strong by long indulgence. Thus my two wills—the old and the new, the carnal and the spiritual—were in conflict within me; and by their discord they tore my soul apart.
Thus I came to understand from my own experience what I had read, how "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." I truly lusted both ways, yet more in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. For in the latter it was no longer really I who was involved, because here I was more an unwilling sufferer than a willing actor. And yet it was through me that habit had become an armed enemy against me, because I had willingly come to be what I unwillingly found myself to be. Who, then, can with any justice speak against it, when just punishment follows the sinner?⁠b I no longer had my accustomed excuse that I still hesitated to forsake the world and serve you because my perception of the truth was uncertain. For now it was certain. But, still bound to the earth, I refused to be your soldier; and was as much afraid of being freed from all entanglements as we ought to fear to be entangled.
So I was sweetly burdened with the baggage of the world, like someone asleep, and my musings on you were like the efforts of those who desire to awake, but who are still overpowered with drowsiness and fall back into deep slumber. And as no one wishes to sleep forever (for all men rightly consider waking better)—yet a man will usually put off shaking off his drowsiness when there is a heavy lethargy in his limbs; and he is glad to sleep on even when his reason disapproves, and the hour for rising has struck—so I was sure that it was much better for me to give myself up to your love than to go on yielding myself to my own lust. Your love satisfied and conquered me; my lust pleased and fettered me. I had no answer to your calling to me, "Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." On all sides, you showed me that your words are true, and I, convicted by the truth, had nothing at all to reply but the drawling and drowsy words: "Presently; see, presently. Leave me alone a little while." But "presently, presently," had no present; and my "leave me alone a little while" went on for a long while. In vain did I "delight in your law in the inner man" while "another law in my members warred against the law of my mind and brought me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." For the law of sin is the tyranny of habit, by which the mind is drawn and held, even against its will. Yet it deserves to be so held because it so willingly falls into the habit. "Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death" but your grace alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord?