Confessions by Augustine — BOOK IV: Manichee and Astrologer

1. 1. Augustine taught rhetoric for nine years, from age 19 to 28, while privately professing Manichaeism.
2. 2. Augustine rejected a soothsayer's offer to ensure victory in a poetry contest by killing animals, not out of piety but because he abhorred such sacrifices.
3. 3. Augustine consulted astrologers but was advised against it by the proconsul and physician Vindicianus, who argued astrology is bogus and likened its correct predictions to chance.
4. 4. Augustine's close friend, whom he had converted to Manichaeism, was baptized while unconscious during a fever and afterward rebuked Augustine for mocking the sacrament.
5. 5. Augustine's grief over his friend's death made him a problem to himself; he wept bitterly and found no rest in any earthly comfort.
6. 6. Augustine realized that loving a mortal friend as if he would never die caused his deep grief; true friendship is only possible in God, who cannot be lost.
7. 7. Augustine wrote a work On the Beautiful and the Fitting, distinguishing beauty as pleasing in itself from fittingness as adaptation to something else.
8. 8. Augustine mistakenly believed evil is a substance with life, and that the soul is by nature what God is, leading to pride and error.
9. 9. Augustine read and understood Aristotle's Categories on his own at age 20, but mistakenly applied the ten categories to God, thinking God has attributes like magnitude.
10. 10. Augustine learned liberal arts quickly without a teacher, but his talent was pernicious because he used it for pride rather than dedicating it to God.
11. 11. Augustine concludes that the soul finds no rest in transient things; only in God, who is eternal and unchanging, can it find true peace.