clamour, and went in the morning and at even to the church, and prayed God for her son.
In that time, they of Milan required a doctor of rhetoric of Symmachus the prefect of Rome, that he might read rhetoric at Milan. And that time Ambrose, servant of God, was bishop of that city, and Augustin was sent at the prayer of them of Milan. And his mother might not rest, but did much pain to come to him, and found him that he neither was very Manichean ne very catholic, And then it happed that Augustin began to haunt with S. Ambrose, and oft heard his predications, and was much ententive to hear if anything were said against the Manicheans or other heresies.
On a time it happed that S. Ambrose disputed long against the error Manichean, and condemned it by open and evident reasons and by authorities, so that this error was all put out of the heart of Augustin. And what befell to him afterward he rehearseth in the book of his Confessions, and saith: 'When I knew thee first thou beatedst away the infirmity of my sight, shining in me forcibly. And I trembled for love and dread, and I found myself right far from thee in a region of unlikeness, like as I heard thy voice from heaven on high, saying: I am meat of great ones; increase and thou shalt eat me; thou shalt not change me in thee as meat of thy flesh, but thou shalt be changed in me.’ And as he rehearseth there, the life of Jesu Christ pleased him much well, but he doubted yet to go in such distresses. But our Lord anon put in his mind that he should go to Simplician, in whom all divine grace shone, for to
