Key Arguments

• Augustine anticipates that ‘proud people may laugh’ at his past, but insists he will nevertheless confess his shame precisely ‘since it is for your praise’.
• He asks God to permit him to run through his memory of ‘the past twistings of my mistaken life’ not as morbid recall but as an act of sacrifice: ‘Allow me, I pray you, grant me leave to run through my memory, as it is in the present, of the past twistings of my mistaken life and to sacrifice to you “a victim of jubilation” (Ps. 26: 6).’
• By calling this recollection a ‘victim of jubilation’, he explicitly frames truthful confession as a joyful sacrificial act to God, not merely as psychological self‑expression.
• He links this to his condition of ‘weakness and indigence’, implying that confession‑as‑praise is especially fitting for the spiritually poor.

Source Quotes

On the other side, we sought to purge ourselves of that filth by supplying food to those whose tide was the Elect and Holy, so that in the workshop of their stomach they could manufacture for us angels and gods to bring us liberation.2 This was how my life was spent, and these were the activities of myself and my friends who had been deceived through me and with me. Proud people may laugh at me. As yet they have not themselves been prostrated and brought low for their soul’s health by you, my God. But I shall nevertheless confess to you my shame, since it is for your praise (Ps. 105: 47). Allow me, I pray you, grant me leave to run through my memory, as it is in the present, of the past twistings of my mistaken life and to sacrifice to you ‘a victim of jubilation’ (Ps.

105: 47). Allow me, I pray you, grant me leave to run through my memory, as it is in the present, of the past twistings of my mistaken life and to sacrifice to you ‘a victim of jubilation’ (Ps. 26: 6). Without you, what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?

So let the mighty and powerful laugh at our expense. In our weakness and indigence (Ps. 73: 21), we may make our confession to you. ii (2) In those years I used to teach the art of rhetoric. Overcome by greed myself, I used to sell the eloquence that would overcome an opponent.

Key Concepts

• Proud people may laugh at me. As yet they have not themselves been prostrated and brought low for their soul’s health by you, my God. But I shall nevertheless confess to you my shame, since it is for your praise (Ps. 105: 47).
• Allow me, I pray you, grant me leave to run through my memory, as it is in the present, of the past twistings of my mistaken life and to sacrifice to you ‘a victim of jubilation’ (Ps. 26: 6).
• In our weakness and indigence (Ps. 73: 21), we may make our confession to you.

Context

Book IV, section i (1): Having summarized his nine years in error, Augustine explains the theological meaning of his retrospective narrative as a sacrificial act of praise through confession.