Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism · Medieval · c. 397–400
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the prayer as a diagnosis of a divided will: chastity is requested and, in the same breath, scheduled for later. Information is not the shortage; wanting is split. A rival reading treats the sentence as a comic confession only, a young man's joke rather than a theory of the will, but the surrounding chapter uses it to show belief already present beside a choice not yet made. It sits in book eight, in the garden crisis, before the voice that says to take up and read.
Did Augustine of Hippo really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Chadwick's Confessions, book eight. Augustine reports the prayer of his younger self in Latin that is secure. He is exposing a delay, not recommending it.
Where it comes from
Confessions VIII.7.17
Approximate date: c. 397–400.
How to use it
Someone in Glasgow tells friends the smoking will stop after this packet, and the packet is replaced on the way home from the supermarket. The wish is public and the timetable is private, and Augustine's phrase names that gap rather than closing it.
A mindset reading
A divided will is not cured by a sharper slogan, because part of the person is still attached to the thing the prayer claims to leave, and that attachment sets the date. Calling the delay honesty is one description; calling it a policy is closer to the use he makes of his younger voice.
Understand the philosophy
Book eight stages conversion as a crisis of the will, not as a shortage of arguments. The key term is the will, voluntas, which can issue a command and fail to obey it because it is not whole. He already assents to the good he will not yet do. That is why the joke is philosophically serious rather than gossip about sex.
- self
- virtue
- change
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the prayer as a diagnosis of a divided will: chastity is requested and, in the same breath, scheduled for later. Information is not the shortage; wanting is split. A rival reading treats the sentence as a comic confession only, a young man's joke rather than a theory of the will, but the surrounding chapter uses it to show belief already present beside a choice not yet made. It sits in book eight, in the garden crisis, before the voice that says to take up and read.
Did Augustine of Hippo really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Chadwick's Confessions, book eight. Augustine reports the prayer of his younger self in Latin that is secure. He is exposing a delay, not recommending it.
Which work is it in?
Confessions VIII.7.17 Approximate date: c. 397–400.