Book 2- The Sixteenth Year

Ah, the stealing of the pears story...  one passage I especially liked in this section:

In VII, "And the evil I have not done, that also I know is by Thy grace: for what might I not have done, seeing that I loved evil solely because it was evil?  I confess that Thou hast forgiven all alike--the sins I committed of my own motion, the sins I would have committed but for Thy grace.  / Would any man, considering his own weakness, dare to attribute his chastity or his innocence to his own powers and so love Thee less--as if he did not need the same mercy as those who return to Thee after sin.  If any man has heard Thy voice and followed it and done none of the things he finds me here recording and confessing, still he must not scorn me: for I am healed by the same doctor who preserved him from falling into sickness, or at least into such grievous sickness.  But let him love Thee even more: seeing me rescued out of such sickness of sin, and himself saved from faling into such sickness of sin, by the one same Saviour."

I like how Augustine places God as the source of everything good that ever is or ever happens.  How little truly good we can do on our own!  Even when we do good we often do it for the wrong reasons.  Quite Calvinist of him too, don't you think Nick?  lol.