The Confessions is the founding text of Christian contemplative interiority. Written by Augustine in his early forties, around 397, while he was bishop of the small North African town of Hippo, the book is structured as a continuous prayer addressed in the second person to God. The reader overhears, but the form is direct address.
The first nine books are autobiography, tracing Augustine’s life from infancy through his conversion at age thirty-two. The tenth book is a meditation on memory and self-knowledge. The final three books are a sustained reflection on the opening of the book of Genesis. The whole arc moves from the outer world into the interior of the soul and out again to the cosmos, the soul having been recognised as interior to itself.
The book’s most famous passages have entered the language: the unrestful heart that finds rest only in God, the cry of Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new, the boy stealing pears not because he wanted pears but because he wanted to do wrong. Less famous but equally important is the long psychological analysis of memory in Book Ten, which is the foundation of every subsequent Western inquiry into self.
Book one — Of his infancy and boyhood
1.1
Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.
1.5
Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good!
[ A representative passage. The Confessions unfold across thirteen books, the first nine autobiographical, the last four moving into theology and meditation on time, memory, and creation. The complete Pusey translation is at the source linked above. ]