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  CONFESSIONS - BOOK IX - CHAPTER III
  by St. Augustine
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5. Verecundus was severely disturbed by this new happiness of mine,
since he was still firmly held by his bonds and saw that he would lose
my companionship. For he was not yet a Christian, though his wife was;
and, indeed, he was more firmly enchained by her than by anything else,
and held back from that journey on which we had set out. Furthermore, he
declared he did not wish to be a Christian on any terms except those
that were impossible. However, he invited us most courteously to make
use of his country house so long as we would stay there. O Lord, thou
wilt recompense him for this \"in the resurrection of the just,\"[271]
seeing that thou hast already given him \"the lot of the
righteous.\"[272] For while we were absent at Rome, he was overtaken
with bodily sickness, and during it he was made a Christian and departed
this life as one of the faithful. Thus thou hadst mercy on him, and not
on him only, but on us as well; lest, remembering the exceeding kindness
of our friend to us and not able to count him in thy flock, we should be
tortured with intolerable grief. Thanks be unto thee, our God; we are
thine. Thy exhortations, consolations, and faithful promises assure us
that thou wilt repay Verecundus for that country house at Cassiciacum--
where we found rest in thee from the fever of the world--with the
perpetual freshness of thy paradise in which thou hast forgiven him his
earthly sins, in that mountain flowing with milk, that fruitful mountain
--thy own.

6. Thus Verecundus was full of grief; but Nebridius was joyous. For he
was not yet a Christian, and had fallen into the pit of deadly error,
believing that the flesh of thy Son, the Truth, was a phantom.[273] Yet
he had come up out of that pit and now held the same belief that we did.
And though he was not as yet initiated in any of the sacraments of thy
Church, he was a most earnest inquirer after truth. Not long after our
conversion and regeneration by thy baptism, he also became a faithful
member of the Catholic Church, serving thee in perfect chastity and
continence among his own people in Africa, and bringing his whole
household with him to Christianity. Then thou didst release him from the
flesh, and now he lives in Abraham\\

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Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/st-augustine/confessions-book-ix-chapter-iii/
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