Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images In Augustine’s Confessions, the saint speaks of his turn to God in language so potent that it has reverberated through centuries. He is “gnawed within,” in Garry Wills’ translation, “stalled in a terrible regret.” He tells God that he “lashed” his soul, “trying to force it along with me in my quest for you,” but his soul would not comply. Instead, “it could only tremble in silence, holding it death to escape the stream of habits that were draining it to death.”