In the late 300's AD, a famous, well-educated "heretic" named Augustine came to the city of Milan. A former teacher, Augustine was known as a dazzling rhetorician, and became an orator for the city, gradually moving up the imperial hierarchy. In this passage from his Confessions, Saint Augustine turns the literary artistry of his oratorical talents to the task of describing his disillusionment with Manicheism in the form of a prayer addressed directly to the Heavenly Father. His literary artistry is shown in his use of extended apostrophe and imagery to communicate his humbled submissiveness to God.
Augustine was born in 354 AD in the North African city of Thagaste. His father, Patrick, was a pagan, and his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian who labored untiringly for her son's conversion to Christianity. Augustine received his grammar-level education in Thagaste, and, with the blessing of the wealthy patron Romanianus, went on to study rhetoric in Carthage. …
