Key Arguments

• He responds to the recollection of his sins with love and thanksgiving, crediting God’s grace for their removal: "I will love you, Lord, and I will give thanks and confession to your name because you have forgiven me such great evils and my nefarious deeds. I attribute to your grace and mercy that you have melted my sins away like ice (Ecclus. 3: 17)."
• He explicitly extends grace to cover sins he did not commit: "I also attribute to your grace whatever evil acts I have not done. What could I not have done when I loved gratuitous crime?"
• He insists that no one should ascribe his chastity to his own power: "No one who considers his frailty would dare to attribute to his own strength his chastity and innocence, so that he has less cause to love you—as if he had less need of your mercy by which you forgive the sins of those converted to you."
• He argues that the person called and preserved from such acts should not despise the healed sinner, but recognize common dependence on the same Physician: "If man is called by you, follows your voice, and has avoided doing those acts which I am recalling and avowing in my own life, he should not mock the healing of a sick man by the Physician, whose help has kept him from falling sick, or at least enabled him to be less gravely ill."
• He concludes that such a person should perhaps love God even more, because he sees God’s preventive and curative grace: "He should love you no less, indeed even more; for he sees that the one who delivered me from the great sicknesses of my sins is also he through whom he may see that he himself has not been a victim of the same great sicknesses."

Source Quotes

I will love you, Lord, and I will give thanks and confession to your name because you have forgiven me such great evils and my nefarious deeds. I attribute to your grace and mercy that you have melted my sins away like ice (Ecclus. 3: 17). I also attribute to your grace whatever evil acts I have not done.

3: 17). I also attribute to your grace whatever evil acts I have not done. What could I not have done when I loved gratuitous crime?

I confess that everything has been forgiven, both the evil things I did of my own accord, and those which I did not do because of your guidance. No one who considers his frailty would dare to attribute to his own strength his chastity and innocence, so that he has less cause to love you—as if he had less need of your mercy by which you forgive the sins of those converted to you. If man is called by you, follows your voice, and has avoided doing those acts which I am recalling and avowing in my own life, he should not mock the healing of a sick man by the Physician, whose help has kept him from falling sick, or at least enabled him to be less gravely ill.

No one who considers his frailty would dare to attribute to his own strength his chastity and innocence, so that he has less cause to love you—as if he had less need of your mercy by which you forgive the sins of those converted to you. If man is called by you, follows your voice, and has avoided doing those acts which I am recalling and avowing in my own life, he should not mock the healing of a sick man by the Physician, whose help has kept him from falling sick, or at least enabled him to be less gravely ill. He should love you no less, indeed even more; for he sees that the one who delivered me from the great sicknesses of my sins is also he through whom he may see that he himself has not been a victim of the same great sicknesses. viii (16) ‘What fruit had I’, wretched boy, in these things (Rom.

If man is called by you, follows your voice, and has avoided doing those acts which I am recalling and avowing in my own life, he should not mock the healing of a sick man by the Physician, whose help has kept him from falling sick, or at least enabled him to be less gravely ill. He should love you no less, indeed even more; for he sees that the one who delivered me from the great sicknesses of my sins is also he through whom he may see that he himself has not been a victim of the same great sicknesses. viii (16) ‘What fruit had I’, wretched boy, in these things (Rom. 6: 21) which I now blush to recall, above all in that theft in which I loved nothing but the theft itself?

Key Concepts

• I attribute to your grace and mercy that you have melted my sins away like ice (Ecclus. 3: 17).
• I also attribute to your grace whatever evil acts I have not done.
• No one who considers his frailty would dare to attribute to his own strength his chastity and innocence, so that he has less cause to love you—
• he should not mock the healing of a sick man by the Physician, whose help has kept him from falling sick, or at least enabled him to be less gravely ill.
• He should love you no less, indeed even more;

Context

Book II, section vii (15): Having probed the roots of his theft, Augustine turns to gratitude, articulating a theology of grace that covers both commission and omission, and setting a norm for how morally ‘respectable’ people should regard and love God in light of others’ dramatic conversions.