Augustine was a learned and well-respected teacher of rhetoric in the city of Milan in the 4th century. But he was tormented over the condition of his soul. By his own admission, he had lived a sexually promiscuous life. One day, when he was 32 years old, he threw himself to the ground in the garden of the house he shared with his friend, Alypius. Amid the river of tears, he kept crying out, “And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord wilt Thou be angry unto the end? Remember not our former iniquities.”
While weeping, Augustine heard the voice of a child from a neighboring residence, chanting repetitiously, “Tolle, lege! Tolle, lege!” which being translated means, “Take, read! Take, read!” Augustine hurriedly grabbed a Bible and opened it at random, his eyes falling on Romans 13:13-14, where he read:
“Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”
Augustine from that point on became the single most influential theologian of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions.