书名：Confessions忏悔录

作者：Saint Augustine
出版社名称：Penguin Classics
出版时间：1961
语种：英文
ISBN：9780140441147
商品尺寸：19.7 x 12.9 x 2.2 cm
包装：平装
页数：352（以实物为准）
在人类浩淼的书海里，关于“忏悔”方面的书，可以说寥寥无几，造成深远影响力的“忏悔录”则更是少之又少。而眼前这本由一个名字叫奥古斯丁的人所写的Confessions《忏悔录》，可称作影响人类心灵之路的重要一本。圣奥古斯丁生活到75岁，信奉罗马天主教；当然，他皈依天主教的过程，十分曲折而复杂，本书正是他如何皈依宗教全过程的历史纪录。

这本书的出版，被后世普遍认为是整个书海世界中，第1本自传体式的书；并为接下来的千年，立了一个写自传的规矩。这部《忏悔录》非常忠实地纪录下了作者思想总体变化的全过程，更难能可贵的是，他能保持中间没有任何“时间隔断”现象。

本书为Penguin Classics推出的英文版，内容完整，书本轻巧便携。

The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Saint Augustine spent his early years torn between conflicting faiths and world views. His Confessions, written when he was in his forties, recount how, slowly and painfully, he came to turn away from his youthful ideas and licentious lifestyle, to become instead a staunch advocate of Christianity and one of its most influential thinkers. A remarkably honest and revealing spiritual autobiography, the Confessions also address fundamental issues of Christian doctrine, and many of the prayers and meditations it includes are still an integral part of the practice of Christianity today.

Review
"[Wills] renders Augustine’s famous and influential text in direct language with all the spirited wordplay and poetic strength intact." —Los Angeles Times

"[Wills’s] translations… are meant to bring Augustine straight into our own minds; and they succeed. Well-known passages, over which my eyes have often gazed, spring to life again from Wills’s pages." —Peter Brown, The New York Review of Books

"Augustine flourishes in Wills’s hand." —James Wood

"A masterful synthesis of classical philosophy and scriptural erudition." —Chicago Tribune
奥古斯丁的Confessions《忏悔录》是一部诗意浓厚的长篇祷文，自始至终以上帝为谈话对象，向上帝倾诉衷曲。作者在书中所著重的乃是分析自己灵性生活的每一过程，从幼年到少年，又从少年到成年各阶段的发展情况。在这方面作者很像一个灵魂解剖家，把灵魂放在上帝的祭坛上，作精密而彻底的解剖，只是所解剖的不是别人的灵魂，而是他自己的灵魂。作者既然相信上帝乃是洞悉人心、明察秋毫的神，在上帝面前说话，还有甚么可隐瞒的？因此，《忏悔录》表现了作者个人真实的情感和人格，一点隐讳、一点做作都没有。历代以来均有著名传记文学作品出现，但是要找出一部不替书中人物文过饰非，不为自己扬善隐恶的作品，已经很不容易。至于专门以贬责自己，暴露自己罪行和弱点为内容的传记，奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》也许是基督教文学作品中仅见的一部。

圣·奥古斯丁（公元354～公元430年）著名的神学家、哲学家。奥古斯丁思想的影响，是在欧洲发生巨大的社会和政治变动的时期。就是罗马帝国衰亡的时期，紧着欧洲就黑暗的中世纪。这个时期宗教狂热严重，黑暗而残酷。而欧洲基督教的有组织教会的组成，也是在这个时期。奥古斯丁的思想，成为推动其发展的主要力量。在以后的数千年中，奥古斯丁的神学成为基督教教义的基本来源。

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was one of the outstanding figures of the declining Roman Empire. From his own account he lived a life of sin until his conversion to Christianity at the age of 32. Twelve years later he gave a personal account of his search for truth in "The Confessions", where his analysis of the emotional side of Christian experience in the face of sin remains unsurpassed. They are also intensely revealing of the man himself.
CAN any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom? Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.

Grant me, Lord, to know and understand whether a man is first to pray to you for help or to praise you, and whether he must know you before he can call you to his aid. If he does not know you, how can he pray to you? For he may call for some other help, mistaking it for yours.

Or are men to pray to you and learn to know you through their prayers? Only, how are they to call upon the Lord until they have learned to believe in him? And how are they to believe in him without a preacher to listen to?

Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him, because all who look for him shall find him, and when they find him they will praise him. I shall look for you, Lord, by praying to you and as I pray I shall believe in you, because we have had preachers to tell us about you. It is my faith that calls to you, Lord, the faith which you gave me and made to live in me through the merits of your Son, who became man, and through the ministry of your preacher.

How shall I call upon my God for aid, when the call I make is for my Lord and my God to come into myself? What place is there in me to which my God can come, what place that can receive the God who made heaven and earth? Does this then mean, O Lord my God, that there is in me something fit to contain you? Can even heaven and earth, which you made and in which you made me, contain you? Or, since nothing that exists could exist without you, does this mean that whatever exists does, in this sense, contain you? If this is so, since I too exist, why do I ask you to come into me? For I should not be there at all unless, in this way, you were already present within me.