1. 1. Concerning what is written: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, down to where it is written: And there was evening, and there was morning, one day (Gen 1:1-5). The most foolish Manichees think that this passage of the Law is opposed to the Gospel, saying that in Genesis it is written that God made heaven and earth and light by himself, whereas in the Gospel it is written that the world was framed through our Lord Jesus Christ, where it is said: And the world was made through him, and the world did not know him (John 1:10). For they are refuted in three ways. First, because when it is said In the beginning God made heaven and earth, the Christian understands the Trinity itself, where not only the Father but also the Son and the Holy Spirit are understood. For we believe not in three gods but in one God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, although the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. About this unity of the Trinity it would take long to dispute in this place. Next, because where it is said God said: Let it be made, and it was made, there it is necessary to understand that he made through the Word what he made. But the Word of the Father is the Son. This passage of Genesis, then, where it is written And God said: Let it be made, and it was made, is not at odds with that passage of the Gospel where it is said And the world was made through him, that is, through our Lord; because he himself is the Word of the Father through whom all things were made. Finally, if for this reason the Son is not understood in Genesis—because it was not said that God made through the Son—then neither in the Gospel does God feed the birds and clothe the lilies through the Son (See Matt 6:26-30), and the countless other things that the Lord himself says God the Father does, although he does not say that he does them through the Son.

And as for the testimony of the Apostle that they add, where he says of our Lord Jesus Christ He is the firstborn of all creation; and all things were made through him in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible (Col 1:15-16)—and they say that this passage too is opposed to Genesis, where God is said to have made the world in such a way that the Son is not specifically named there—they err greatly; and they do not see that, if it is so, the Apostle himself is at odds with himself, since in another place he says that there is one from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things (Rom 11:36), and does not name the Son. But just as here the Son is not named and yet is understood, so too in Genesis; and just as these two passages of Paul are not at odds with each other, so neither is Genesis at odds with the Gospel.

2. 1. Concerning what is written: And God finished on the sixth day all his works that he had made, and on the seventh he rested from all those works that he had made (Gen 2:2). Against this passage too the Manichees raise a calumny, and they say that what is written in Genesis—that God rested on the seventh day from all his works that he had made—is opposed to the New Testament, since the Lord says in the Gospel: My Father is working until now (John 5:17). This is in no way contrary. For the Lord refutes the error of the Jews, who thought that God had rested on the seventh day in such a way that from then on he did absolutely nothing. But he rested from all his works that he had made, so that he should no longer make the world with all the things that are in it—not, however, so that he should rest also from the administration of the world. For it is not written: God rested from all his works, so that thereafter he should do nothing. But it is written: God rested from all his works that he had made: so that thereafter he should work not in making the world, from which work he had ceased after its completion, but in administering it, in which work the Lord made known that he was. Nor does that rest signify that God sought a pause as if after labor, but that he ceased from establishing the natures of things after the completion of those things, although he is still at work in administering them.

2. 2. But the Jews did not understand the observance of the Sabbath, since they thought one ought to cease even from those works that avail for the salvation of human beings. Hence the Lord refuted them in other places too, with a marvelous comparison, about the ox that fell into a pit and the beast of burden that must be loosed so as to be led to water (See Luke 14:5; 13:15). But the Sabbath—not repudiated, but understood, by Christians—has indeed ceased to be observed in a carnal way, yet it is retained spiritually by the holy, who understand the voice of the Lord calling them to rest and saying: Come to me, you who labor, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt 11:28-30). This Sabbath, that is, this rest, is what that Scripture signifies, which the Jews did not understand, and which, by the dispensation of the times, they followed carnally as a shadow, the body, as it were, of which shadow—that is, the truth—was to be given to us. But just as that rest of God is intimated after the making of the world, so the rest that is promised to us we shall attain after the works that we have in this world, if they shall have been just—namely in the seventh and likewise last part of the age, about which it would take long to dispute. The Lord, then, does not rescind the Scripture of the Old Testament, but compels it to be understood; nor does he abolish the Sabbath so that what was figured should perish, but rather he discloses it so that what was hidden may appear.

3. 1. Concerning what is written in Genesis: And God said: It is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helper. And God sent a sleep upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, from which he formed Eve, whom he brought to Adam; and he said: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and will cleave to his wife (Gen 2:18, 21-22, 24). Against this passage again the Manichees raise a calumny, saying that the statement in which God is written both to have formed the woman and to have joined her to the man is against the New Testament—for this reason: because in the Gospel the Lord says: Everyone who has left house, or wife, or parents, or brothers, or children for the kingdom of heaven will receive a hundredfold in this time, and in the age to come will possess eternal life (Matt 19:29; Mark 10:29-30; Luke 18:29-30).

In this calumny I marvel that they are so blinded—or rather I do not marvel: for their malice blinded them (Wis 2:21), as it is written. But still, who does not see how many precepts there are in the New Testament about loving one's wife? For why do they say rather that the Old Testament is opposed to this saying of the Lord, in which he says that a wife is to be left for the kingdom of heaven, and not that the New is at odds with itself? Which it is wicked to say. For the things that seem to the unskilled to be contrary must be understood, not rashly accused.

3. 2. For the Lord too, when asked by the Jews whether it pleased him that a wife be dismissed by giving a bill of divorce, answered them, saying: Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female; and said: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and will cleave to his wife, and the two will be one flesh? And so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined into one, let no man separate. They say to him: Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce and to dismiss her? Jesus says to them: Because of the hardness of your heart Moses permitted you to dismiss your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever dismisses his wife, except for the cause of fornication, makes her commit adultery; and he himself, if he marries another, commits adultery (Matt 19:3-9).

Behold, they have the saying of the Old Testament confirmed by the Lord himself against the ignorance of the Jews. At the same time he also bore witness to Moses, that he permitted a bill of divorce to be given because of the hardness of their heart.

Do they perhaps say that the Gospel too is contrary to the Gospel? And if they say that this passage is false and was added by corrupters of the Scriptures (for they are accustomed to say this when they do not find what to answer), what if someone else says that what they themselves bring forward is interpolated and false—the Lord saying: Everyone who has left house or wife or parents or children for the kingdom of heaven (Matt 19:29), and so on? The wretches do not understand how, when they say these things, they try to overturn the whole Christian faith. But the true faith and the teaching of the Catholic Church confirms that both are true and were spoken by the Lord, and are in no way contrary: because both the joining of husband and wife is from the Lord, and the leaving of a wife for the kingdom of heaven is from the Lord.

For just as, because Jesus Christ raised the dead and gave them life, life itself is not on that account not to be left for the kingdom of heaven, so, although the Lord gave a wife to the man, she is nonetheless to be left, if there is need, for the kingdom of heaven. For this is not always necessary, as the Apostle says: If any believer has an unbelieving wife, and she consents to live with him, let him not dismiss her (1 Cor 7:12). He certainly means that if she does not consent to live with him—that is, if she abhors the faith of Christ in him, and does not endure that he is a Christian—she is to be left for the kingdom of heaven, as the same apostle says in what follows: But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; for a brother or sister is not subject to servitude in such cases (1 Cor 7:15).

If, then, anyone leaves the kingdom of heaven because he is unwilling to leave a wife who does not endure a Christian husband, he is disapproved by the Lord; and likewise if any man leaves his wife by giving a bill of divorce when the cause does not exist of either fornication or obtaining the kingdom of heaven, he is similarly disapproved by the Lord. Thus neither are these two evangelical passages found to be contrary to each other, nor is the Gospel contrary to the Old Testament: because there the wife is joined to the husband so that together they may deserve to possess the kingdom of heaven; and so the wife is commanded to be left if she hinders him from possessing the kingdom of heaven.

3. 3. And therefore, when the Apostle admonishes both Christians—that is, husbands and wives—is it not said thus: Love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church, and handed himself over for her (Eph 5:25, 22)? And: Let wives be subject to their own husbands as to the Lord; for the Church too is subject to Christ?

And does not that which these wretches mock in the Old Testament, where it is written For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and will cleave to his wife, and the two will be one flesh, the same apostle take in a great mystery, when he says: This mystery is great, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church? Then he adds: Nevertheless, let each one love his wife as himself; and let the wife fear her husband (Eph 5:31-33).

Does he not in another place most evidently show that both the nature and the joining of the two sexes subsist from the Lord God as their founder and orderer, when he says: Nevertheless, neither is woman without man, nor man without woman, in the Lord. For as woman is from man, so also is man through woman; but all things are from God (1 Cor 11:11-12)?

If these people were willing to consider this, they would not, by certain passages separated and set against one another with great fraud, make a fog for the unskilled; but they would perceive that all things, in the Old Testament as much as in the New, were written and entrusted by one Holy Spirit.

3. 4. For in the Old Testament too they have, in the prophet Isaiah, how great are the things promised to eunuchs: lest they should think that it is in the New alone that they are praised by the Lord, where he says that there are some who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven, and added: Let him who can grasp it, grasp it (Matt 19:12). For Isaiah too says thus: Thus says the Lord to those eunuchs who keep my precepts, and choose for themselves the things that I will, and are capable of my covenant: I will give them in my house and within my wall a most renowned place, far better than sons and daughters; I will give them an eternal name, and it will never be lacking (Isa 56:4-5). For by certain shadows and figures of things, before the coming of the Lord, in accord with a marvelous and most orderly arrangement of the times, that people was held bound who received the Old Testament; yet in it there is such preaching and foretelling of the New Testament that there are found in the evangelical and apostolic discipline no precepts and promises, however lofty and divine, that are also lacking in those old books. But the holy Scriptures do not desire rash and proud accusers, but diligent and pious readers.

4. Concerning what is written in Genesis: And the Lord said to Cain: What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth. Now you will be cursed from the face of the earth, which has soaked up and received your brother's blood from the slaughter of your hand: for you will have to work the earth, which will give you barren fruits (Gen 4:10-12). Raising a calumny against this passage of Genesis, in which Cain received the curse that he should be punished by the barrenness of the earth, and wishing to show it contrary to the Gospel, the Manichees do not, it seems to me, truly think that they are dealing with human beings, but rather as though those who heard them or read their writings were cattle; so have they abused their lack of skill and their dullness of mind, or rather their blindness of soul.

For they said that the passage in the Gospel is contrary to this one, where the Lord says to his disciples: Do not be anxious about tomorrow; for tomorrow itself will be anxious for itself. Look at the birds of heaven, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns (Matt 6:34, 26). As if indeed the parricide Cain were to be compared to the disciples of Christ, so that, because he deserved the punishment of the barrenness of the earth, it should follow that they too should suffer the same barrenness—they who, following the Lord Jesus Christ, were being made ready to preach the Gospel.

On the contrary, even in these two passages, one of which they set down from Genesis and the other from the Gospel as though hostile to each other, there is found such friendship and concord that no greater could be desired. For what is more fitting, what more suitable, than that the one by whose crime his brother had been slain should be followed by barrenness even as he labored on the earth; while for those by whose ministry, in preaching the word of God, brothers were being set free, a fruitful earth should serve, even though they were not anxious in the least about tomorrow?

But if in the Old Testament they shudder that by the curse of God the earth was made barren for the sinner, why in the New Testament do they not shudder that by the curse of our Lord Jesus Christ the fig tree was made dry (See Matt 21:19), though it was guilty of no sin against its lord? Likewise, if they delight in the saying of the Lord by which he tells his disciples not to be anxious about tomorrow, because God takes care of their food, why do they not also delight in the prophetic saying that he sang, saying: Cast your care upon the Lord, and he will feed you (Ps 55:22 (54:23))?

So that in this way, if they can, the wretches may understand both that those things which they detest in the Old Testament as said about God are so right that they are found even in the New, and that those which in the New they praise and proclaim are found also in the Old: whence the manifest concord of both Testaments may shine forth to those who understand well.

5. 1. Concerning what is written in Genesis: Let us make man to our image and likeness (Gen 1:26). This passage, where it is written in Genesis that man was made to the image and likeness of God, the Manichees say is contrary to the New Testament for this reason: because the Lord says in the Gospel to the Jews: You are from your father the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father: he was a murderer from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him (John 8:44), and because in another place the Jews are called offspring of serpents and vipers (See Matt 3:7; 23:33). They do not understand that the former was said of man before he sinned—that he was made to the image and likeness of God; whereas this which is in the Gospel, You are from your father the devil, is said to sinners and unbelievers.

For in the holy Scriptures the name of "sons" is taken in three ways: in one, according to nature, as Isaac is the son of Abraham, or also the other Jews who come from the same origin; in another, according to teaching, as one is called the son of him from whom he has learned something; as the Apostle calls those his sons who learned the Gospel from him (See 1 Cor 4:14-15); in a third, according to imitation, as the Apostle calls us sons of Abraham, we who imitate his faith (See Gal 3:7).

In two ways, then, are sinful unbelieving Jews called sons of the devil by the Lord: either because they learned impiety from him, as the Apostle says of the devil himself, who now works in the sons of unbelief (Eph 2:2); or because they imitate him, which pertains more to what was said of him, And he did not stand in the truth; because the Jews themselves also did not stand in the truth of the Law that was given to them, the Lord attesting and saying: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote about me (John 5:46). According to the venom of these same sins they are also called offspring of serpents and vipers.

5. 2. But not only Genesis, but also the Apostle proclaims that man was made to the image of God, when he says: A man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man (1 Cor 11:7). And so that it may be manifestly understood that man was made to the image of God not according to the oldness of sin, which is corrupted, but according to the spiritual conformation, the same apostle admonishes that, stripped of the habit of sins—that is, of the old man—we be clothed with the new life of Christ, whom he calls the new man.

And to teach that we once lost this, he calls it a renewal. For he speaks thus: Stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed unto the knowledge of God, according to the image of him who created him (Col 3:9-10). The sons of God, then, are the people renewed to his image, and made like him even to the love of an enemy: as the Lord says that we ought to love our enemies, so that we may be like our Father who is in heaven (See Matt 5:44-45). That this has been placed within our power by God himself, Scripture teaches when it says: He gave them power to become sons of God (John 1:12). But people are called sons of the devil when they imitate his impious pride, and fall away from the light and loftiness of wisdom, and do not believe the truth; such as the Lord rebukes when he says: You are from your father the devil (John 8:44), and so on. With this gospel passage the prophet agrees, saying: I said: You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High; but you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes (Ps 82:6-7 (81:6-7)).

6. Concerning what is written in Exodus: Honor your father and your mother (Exod 20:12). To this passage too, where God commanded that parents be honored, the Manichees say that that passage of the Gospel is contrary, where the Lord, to a certain man saying I will go first to bury my father, answered: Let the dead bury their own dead; but you, come, and proclaim the kingdom of God (Luke 9:59-60). This is resolved in the same way as that earlier one, where it was said about leaving a wife for the kingdom of heaven; because we both ought to honor our parents, and yet, for the proclamation of the kingdom of God, despise them by no impiety.

For if the Gospel is contrary to the Old Testament on account of this saying, it begins to be contrary to the Apostle as well, who both admonishes children to honor their parents, and parents to love their children (See Eph 6:2-4; Col 3:20-21). And not only this, but the Lord too will seem to be contrary to himself (which it is wicked to believe), because in another place he says to a man seeking eternal life: If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments, among which he also mentions this: Honor your father and mother. When these commandments are fulfilled, one grows also to the love of God, in which is the whole of perfection. For the love of neighbor is a sure step to the love of God.

And therefore, to the one who answered that he had kept all those commandments, he says that one thing is lacking to him, if he wishes to be perfect: that he should sell all that he has, and give to the poor, and follow him (See Matt 19:17-21). From this it is manifest both that the honor of parents is to be preserved in its own degree, and that they are nevertheless, in comparison with the love of God—especially if they are a hindrance—to be despised without any hesitation. For in the old Scriptures too you have it set down: He who says to father or mother: I do not know you, and who does not acknowledge his own children, he himself, however, knew your covenant (Deut 33:9). Therefore, if in the New Testament the love of parents is commended, and in the Old the contempt of parents is commended, on both heads the two Testaments agree with each other.

7. 1. Concerning what is written in Exodus: I am a jealous God, visiting upon the sons to the third and fourth generation the sins of the parents who hate me (Exod 20:5). To this passage the Manichees say that this of the Gospel is contrary, where the Lord says: Be kind as your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad (Matt 5:45), and that other thing the same Lord says: One must forgive a brother who sins not only seven times, but even seventy times seven (Matt 18:22). Yet if I should ask them whether God does not punish his enemies, they will undoubtedly be thrown into confusion. For they themselves say that God prepares an eternal prison for the race of darkness, which they say is hostile to God. And it is not enough: they do not even hesitate to say that he will punish his own members together with that very race.

But when they come to the passages of the Old and New Testament, in order to deceive the unskilled and to charge that they are opposed to each other, they pretend to be exceedingly good. But let them tell us, to whom is the Lord going to say: Go into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41), if he spares all and damns no one? Hence it must be understood that this too is right, that God repays the sins of the parents to the sons who hate him. For from the fact that he added who hate me, it is understood that those are punished by the sins of their parents who have willed to persevere in the same perversity as their parents.

For such people are punished not by the savagery of God, but rather by his justice and by their own iniquity, as the Prophet says: For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will take itself away from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be rebuked by the iniquity that comes upon it (Wis 1:5)—that is, a man will be rebuked by his own iniquity coming upon him, when the Holy Spirit has departed from him. And in another place: These things they thought, and they erred; for their malice blinded them (Wis 2:21). And in another place: Each one is bound fast by the cords of his own sins (Prov 5:22). With these testimonies of the Old Testament the Apostle agrees from the New, saying: God handed them over to the desires of their heart (Rom 1:24). By this concord of both Testaments it is sufficiently shown that God is not savage, but that each one is savage against himself by sinning.

7. 2. But as for its being written that punishment proceeds to the third and fourth generation, I think nothing else is signified than that, from Abraham himself, who begins to be the father of the people of the Jews, there are four ages, including this one that is now going on, which the evangelist Matthew distinguishes (See Matt 1:17). One is from Abraham to David; another, from David to the migration into Babylon; the third, from the migration into Babylon to the coming of the Lord; from there to the end the fourth is reckoned, as it were the old age of the world, longer than the other ages.

These ages we believe are set down for generations, although each consists of several generations. And since the third begins from the migration into Babylon, when the captivity of the Jews took place, while in the fourth—that is, after the coming of our Lord—the race of the Jews was utterly uprooted from its own soil: by this we are given to understand what was said, that God would repay the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation—to those, surely, lawfully and deservedly, who chose to hold fast, persevering, to the sins of their parents rather than to follow the justice of God. For that the sins of the father do not pertain to a son who lives justly, the prophet Ezekiel shows most plainly (See Ezek 18:14-17).

7. 3. But what is said in the Gospel: Be kind, just as your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad (Matt 5:45), is not contrary to the Old Testament. For God does this to invite to repentance, as the Apostle says: Do you not know that the patience of God invites you to repentance? (Rom 2:4) Nor yet must it on that account be believed that God will not punish those who, as the same Apostle says, store up for themselves wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will repay each one according to his works (Rom 2:5-6). For this patience and goodness of God the Prophet too proclaims, saying: But you spare all, since all things are yours, you who love souls (Wis 11:26), and countless other things by which it is understood that both Testaments proclaim, in goodness and in severity, the mercy and the justice of God.

7. 4. But if they are disturbed by what was said, I am jealous, let them also be disturbed by what the apostle Paul says: I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God; for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Cor 11:2). For holy Scripture, speaking with our words, even through these words shows that nothing can be said worthily of God. For why should not these words too be said of that majesty, of which whatever is said is said unworthily, because it surpasses all the resources of all tongues by its ineffable sublimity? For since husbands are accustomed to guard the chastity of their wives by being jealous, the Scriptures have called "the jealousy of God" the power and discipline of God by which he does not allow a soul to commit fornication unpunished. But the fornication of the soul is a turning away from the fruitfulness of wisdom, and a turning toward the conceiving of temporal enticements and corruptions.

7. 5. But that which he says must be forgiven to a brother not only seven times but even seventy times seven, he certainly says of one who repents. God, however, says that he repays their sins to those who hate him, not to those who are reconciled to him through repentance. For in the prophet too the Lord says: I do not will the death of the sinner, so much as that he should turn back and live (Ezek 18:23; 33:11). From this it readily appears that, both in that patience which invites to repentance, and in that indulgence which pardons the repentant, and in that justice which punishes those who are unwilling to be corrected, both Testaments agree and accord with each other, as both written by one God.

8. Concerning what is written in Exodus: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth (Exod 21:24), and other such things. Against this passage the Manichees, because in the old Law an equal vengeance is permitted, and it is said that an eye is to be forfeited for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, raise a calumny, as though the Lord himself had presented these two things in the Gospel as if at odds and contrary to each other. For he himself says: You have heard that it was said to the men of old: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever wishes to contend with you at law, and to take away your tunic, let him have your cloak as well (Matt 5:38-40).

In these two sayings the difference of the two Testaments is indeed shown, but of both as established nonetheless by one God. For since at first carnal people burned to avenge themselves far more than was the injury of which they complained, a first step of gentleness was established for them, so that the resentment of the one taking vengeance should in no way exceed the measure of the injury received. For in this way he could also someday forgive an injury, who had first learned not to surpass it. Hence the Lord, now leading the people through the grace of the Gospel to the highest peace, built upon this step another: so that he who had already heard not to repay greater vengeance than the harm anyone had suffered, should rejoice with a calmed mind to forgive the whole.

This too the Prophet proclaims in those old books, saying: Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid those who repaid me with evils (Ps 7:3-4 (7:4-5)). And another prophet says of a man of this sort, suffering injuries and bearing them most gently: He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him, he will be filled with reproaches (Lam 3:30). From this it is understood both that a measure of taking vengeance was rightly established for carnal people, and that the entire remission of injury was not only commanded in the New Testament, but foretold long before in the Old.

9. 1. Concerning what is written, that God spoke with Adam and Eve, and with the serpent, and with Cain, and with the other ancients (See Gen 3:4, 13)—among whom he is also written to have appeared to some, and to have been seen by them, in not one but many places of the Scriptures, in which God is found both to have spoken with men and to have appeared to some—the Manichees lie in wait, and say that all these things are contrary to the New Testament, since the Lord says: No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has made known to us about him (John 1:18); and again, what he says to the Jews: You have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his face, nor have his word abiding in you: because you have not believed him whom he sent (John 5:37-38).

To them we reply that by this very thing which is written in the Gospel, No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father; he has made known to us about him, the whole question itself can be resolved: because the Son himself, who is the Word of God, made known about the Father to whom he willed—not only in the most recent times, when he deigned to appear in the flesh, but also earlier, from the foundation of the world—whether by speaking or by appearing, either through some angelic power or through any created thing whatever: because he himself is the truth in all things, and all things hold together by him, and all things serve him at his nod and are subject to him, so that he appears even to the eyes, through a visible created thing, to whom he wills, when he deigns; while he himself, nevertheless, according to his divinity, and according to what he is as the Word of the Father—coeternal with the Father, and unchangeable, through whom all things were made—is seen only by the most purified and most simple heart.

And therefore in certain places Scripture itself testifies that an angel was seen, where it says that God was seen (See Gen 18:1-2). As in that wrestling of Jacob, the one who appeared was also called an angel (See Gen 32:24-30). And when he appeared to Moses in the bush (See Exod 3:2); and likewise in the desert, when he had already led the people out of the land of Egypt, when he received the Law, God spoke to him (See Exod 19:3). But whether in the bush, when he sent him, or afterward, when he gave him the Law, Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles says that an angel appeared to him (See Acts 7:30, 35).

This we say for this reason, lest anyone suppose that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, can be defined as if by places, and appear visibly to anyone, except through some visible created thing. For just as the Word of God is in the prophet, and it is rightly said, "The prophet said," and likewise rightly said, "The Lord said," because the Word of God, who is Christ, speaks the truth in the prophet: so in the angel too he himself speaks, when the angel announces the truth; and it is rightly said, "God said," and "God appeared," and likewise rightly said, "The angel said," and "The angel appeared"; since the one is said in the person of the indwelling God, the other in the person of the serving created thing. From this rule the Apostle too says: Or do you wish to receive proof of him who speaks in me, namely Christ? (2 Cor 13:3)

9. 2. But if this disturbs them, that in the Old Testament God speaks even to sinners—whether to Adam or to Eve, or to the serpent—let them attend also, in the New, to what kind of example the Lord set concerning the foolish and covetous man, how the Lord spoke to him when he said: Fool, this night your soul will be taken from you; these things that you have prepared, whose will they be? (Luke 12:20) For when the truth is spoken even to sinners, through whatever created thing it is spoken, it is spoken only by him who alone is truthful. But as for his saying to the Jews You have neither heard his voice at any time, he says it because those at least with whom he was speaking did not obey. To them he also says: Nor have you seen his face; because it cannot be done. But as for his saying Nor have you his word abiding in you: because in whom the word of God abides, Christ abides in him, whom these people rejected.

For when the Lord himself had said Father, glorify me with that glory which I had with you before the world was made, a voice sounded from heaven: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it (John 12:28; 17:5). Many of the Jews who were present heard this voice, and yet they are not on that account to be said to have heard, because they did not obey so as to believe.

Wherefore, if it is not to be wondered at that the Word of God—that is, the only-begotten Son of God, who makes known about the Father—is manifested, to whom he wills through himself, to whom he wills through some created thing, whether by sounding or by appearing, while he himself is nevertheless seen through himself by the pure heart, and the Father through him—for blessed are the pure in heart, for they themselves will see God (Matt 5:8)—it is not to be wondered at that all these testimonies from both Testaments are in harmony.

10. Concerning what is written, that God spoke to Moses and said to him: Speak to the sons of Israel: Take first-fruits from every man, what you may set apart for me, that is, gold, silver, bronze, purple, fine linen, scarlet, goats' hair, red skins of lambs, whole timbers, oil for illumination, incense, precious stones, that is, beryls; and set up a tabernacle, in which I may be able to dwell with you (Exod 25:2-8). From this too the Manichees stir up a question, and to this passage of the Scriptures they say that this is contrary in the Gospel, where the Lord says: You shall not swear, neither by heaven, because it is the throne of God; nor by earth, because it is the footstool of his feet (Matt 5:34-35). For they argue, and seem to themselves to say something great, when they say: How does that God, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is earth, dwell in a tabernacle that is constructed of gold, and silver, and bronze, and purple, and the hair of beasts, and skins? They bring in as a witness also the apostle Paul, because he says that God dwells in light inaccessible (See 1 Tim 6:16).

To them we put back an equal question, and what they brought forward from the New Testament, we bring forward from the Old Testament. For there it is found written earlier: Heaven is my throne, but earth is the footstool of my feet: what house will you build me, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things? (Isa 66:1-2) Behold, they have where the books of the Old Testament proclaim that God does not dwell in temples made by hands; and yet the Son of our God, having made a whip of cords, drove out of the temple those who were selling oxen and doves, and overturned the tables of the money changers, and said: My Father's house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers (John 2:15-16; Matt 21:12-13).

If, then, someone, setting these two passages over against each other, should wish to deceive the unskilled, and to say that in the Old Testament God is magnified, whose throne is said to be heaven and earth his footstool, and who is denied to dwell in a house made by hands, while in the New Testament a temple constructed by men is called his house: will not the Manichees, even if late, confess both that a dwelling place of God made by the hands of men is taken in both Testaments for some signification, and that God does not dwell in places fashioned by men is proclaimed in both Testaments?

11. Concerning what is written in Exodus: You shall not worship strange gods; and again: Your God is called jealous; for he has been jealous with jealousy (Exod 20:5; 34:14). When the Manichees raise a calumny against this passage which is written, You shall not worship strange gods, they show well enough that it pleases them for many gods to be worshiped. Nor is it any wonder, since in their sect they recall and commend a most numerous family of gods: indeed, they have even come down to these visible things, which they venerate and worship in place of the light of the truth itself; and therefore what is written in Exodus displeases them: You shall not worship strange gods. They add also that this was said for this reason: Your God is called jealous; for he has been jealous with jealousy: so that we should not love a jealous God, as it were, by whose jealousy we are not allowed to be jealous of strange gods.

And therefore they say these things are contrary to the Gospel, since the Lord says: Righteous Father, the world has not known you (John 17:25); as though God were not to be called righteous unless he permits us to worship strange gods. For they discourse that a just God and a jealous God are, as it were, contrary to each other, and they deceive the wretched, not understanding that the whole hope of our salvation is the jealousy of God.

For by this name is signified that providence of his by which he permits no soul to commit fornication away from him unpunished, as the Prophet says: You will destroy all who commit fornication away from you (Ps 73:27 (72:27)). For just as what is called the anger of God is not a disturbance of mind, but a power of taking vengeance, so the jealousy of God is not a torment of mind, by which a husband is wont to be tortured against his wife, or a wife against her husband, but a most tranquil and most sincere justice, by which no soul is permitted to be happy when it is corrupted by false opinions and depraved desires and, in a certain way, made pregnant by them. For those people shudder at these words who have not yet seen that no words are fitting for the ineffable majesty of God. For thus they think one must abstain from these words, as if they were saying something worthy of God, when they do not say these things. For the Holy Spirit, insinuating this very thing to people who understand—how ineffable are the highest divine realities—willed to use even these words, which among men are wont to be reckoned faults; so that from this they might be admonished that even those things which men think they say with some dignity of God are unworthy of his majesty, to which an honoring silence would be more suitable than any human voice.

For I look for the jealousy of a man, and I find a disturbance torturing the heart. Yet when I look for the cause, I find nothing else than that he does not endure the adultery of his spouse. For jealousy is wont to be spoken of most of all and most properly between spouses. And so, if a husband were happy and omnipotent and just through himself, he would avenge the sin of his spouse without any torment, and with complete ease, and with no injustice. And yet this action of his, in the human manner of speaking, even if not properly, I would still call jealousy in a transferred and correct sense.

For who raised a calumny against Cicero, who certainly knew how to speak Latin, when he says to Caesar: Of your virtues none is either more admirable or more pleasing than your mercy (Cicero, Pro Q. Ligario)? And yet they say that "mercy" (misericordia) is named from this, that it makes the heart wretched (miserum cor) of one grieving at another's wretchedness. Does virtue, then, make the heart wretched? What, then, would Cicero answer his calumniators, except that he meant to call clemency by the name of mercy? Since we rightly speak by employing not only proper words, but also neighboring ones.

I wished to make mention of this author, since the question here is not about the matter, but about the word. For just as our authors—those, that is, of the divine writings—thought most of all about realities, so almost all the care of worldly authors is about words. But I have the Gospel, and all the books of the New Testament, in which the mercy of God is very frequently commended. If, then, these wretches dare, let them make a question even from this, and deny that God is merciful, lest he be understood to have a wretched heart. As, then, there can be in God mercy without wretchedness of heart, so too, without decay and torment of mind, let us not disdain to accept the jealousy of God; and let us bear the condition of human speech, so that we may arrive at the divine silence.

But if they say that a jealous God and a just God are contrary, what will they say when in the New Testament too I find I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God (2 Cor 11:2); or even a testimony from the old books brought in within the Gospel: The jealousy for your house has consumed me (John 2:17; Ps 69:9 (68:10))?

Again, when in the Old Testament they read The Lord is righteous, and he has loved righteousness, his face has beheld equity (Ps 11:7 (10:8)), will they not confess that in this way too the two Testaments can seem contrary to the unskilled, in that in the New we find the jealousy of God, in the Old the justice of God? Yet to those who understand well, both are in concert in both, with the great unity and peace of the Holy Spirit?

12. 1. Concerning what is written, that blood must not be eaten, because the blood is the soul of the flesh (See Deut 12:23). To this saying of the old Law the Manichees oppose from the Gospel that which the Lord says, that those are not to be feared who can kill the body, but cannot harm the soul (See Matt 10:28); and they argue, saying: If the blood is the soul, how do men not have power over it, since they do many things with blood—whether by catching it and setting it before dogs and birds as food, or by pouring it out, or by mixing it with filth and mud? For men can do these and countless other things with blood without difficulty. Therefore these people ask, in mockery, how, if the blood is the soul, a man's killer cannot harm the soul, since he has such great power over its blood. They add also what the apostle Paul says: That flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50): and they say: If the blood is the soul, as Moses says, no soul will be found able to attain the kingdom of God.

To this calumny it must first be answered in such a way that they themselves are compelled to show where it is written in the books of the old Law that the human soul is blood. For nowhere will they find this in that Scripture which the wretches, as long as they try to tear it apart, are in no way permitted to understand. But if nothing of the sort is said there about the human soul, what does it pertain to us if the soul of a beast either can be harmed by its killer, or cannot possess the kingdom of God? But because these people are exceedingly anxious about the souls of beasts (for though human souls are rational, they nevertheless suppose that they are turned back into beasts), they reckon that the kingdoms of heaven are shut against themselves, if they agree that they are shut against the souls of beasts.

12. 2. What of the fact that Adimantus, one of the disciples of Mani, whom they recall to have been a great teacher of that sect, even dared to insult the people of Israel? He dared, then, to insult the people of the Jews, because, according to their understanding, by which they suppose that blood is the soul, the souls of their own parents were partly devoured by serpents, partly consumed by fire, partly dried up in the deserts and the most rugged places of the mountains. But if anyone should grant that this is true, he would nevertheless prove that it was done without any crime of those whom this man wished to insult. For they themselves did not in any part harm the souls of their parents, to whom he said all those things happened according to these people's understanding: wherefore they can have grief from this, not guilt.

But what will Adimantus himself do, according to his own opinion, by which he believed that even rational souls—that is, the souls of men—can be thrust into the bodies of beasts? What, then, will he do about so great a crime, if at some time he has wearied a slow beast of burden with blows, or a frenzied one with the bridle, in which perhaps the soul of his father was? Not to mention that he could even have killed his parents among the lice and fleas, from whose slaughter these people do not refrain. For what does it profit them that they sometimes deny that human souls can be turned back even into these tiniest of living creatures? For they deny this lest they be held guilty of so many killings, or be compelled to spare lice and fleas and bedbugs, and to endure such great annoyances from them without any license to slay them. For they are vehemently pressed as to why a human soul can be turned back into a little fox, and cannot into a weasel; since the cub of a little fox is perhaps even smaller than a large weasel. Then, if it can into a weasel, why not into a mouse? And if into this one, why not into a gecko? And if into it, why not into a locust? Then into a bee, then into a fly, then into a bedbug, and from there all the way to a flea, and to anything else far tinier? For they do not find where to set a limit: and so, through this trifling credulity, their consciences are overwhelmed with countless crimes of homicide.

12. 3. For from the fact that it is written that the blood of a beast is its soul—besides what I said above, that it does not pertain to me what is done about the soul of a beast—I can also interpret that precept as set down in a sign. For the Lord did not hesitate to say This is my body (Matt 26:26), when he was giving a sign of his body.

12. 4. But as for what the Apostle says, Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, this was said in the Law too: My spirit will not remain in these, since they are flesh (Gen 6:3). And so often in the old books a future reward is promised to the souls of the just. But still, the Apostle, wishing to intimate what kind of body the just will have through the transformation at the resurrection—since they will not marry, nor take wives, but will be like the angels in heaven (Matt 22:30)—wishing, then, to intimate this future transformation of the bodies of the saints, the Apostle said: For I tell you, brothers, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9). This can be found not from one separated sentence recalled for the sake of fraud, but from the whole passage of the Epistle being gone through, or rather read (for the matter is not obscure). For he says thus: This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

That he says this about the body is manifestly found from what precedes, when he says: Not all flesh is the same flesh: one indeed of men, another of beasts; one flesh of birds, another of fishes. And there are heavenly bodies, and earthly bodies: but the glory of the heavenly is one, that of the earthly another; one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it will rise in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it will rise in glory: it is sown in weakness, it will rise in power: an animal body is sown, a spiritual body will rise. If there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual, as it is written: The first man Adam was made into a living soul, the last Adam into a life-giving spirit. But the spiritual is not first, but the animal; afterward, the spiritual. The first man, from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven, heavenly. As is the earthly, such also are the earthly; and as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven. But this I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance; nor will corruption possess incorruption by inheritance (1 Cor 15:39-50).

Surely it is now clear why the Apostle said this. Why, then, does this man, by so base a fraud, recall nothing but this last part, and keep silent about those earlier things by which this, which he badly interprets, could be well understood? For since the body of our Lord, after the resurrection, was so raised into heaven that for that heavenly habitation it received a heavenly change, and we have been bidden to hope for this on the last day, therefore the Apostle said: As is the earthly, such also are the earthly, that is, mortal; and as is the heavenly, such also are the heavenly, that is, immortal—not only in their souls, but also in their bodies. Hence he had also said above that the glory of heavenly bodies is one, and that of earthly bodies another.

But because he said that the body will be spiritual at the resurrection, it must not on that account be thought that it will be not a body but a spirit: rather, he calls it a spiritual body that is in every way subject to the spirit, without any corruption or death. For because he calls the body that we now have an animal body, it must not on that account be thought that it is not a body, but a soul. Therefore, just as the body is now called animal because it is subject to the soul, but cannot yet be called spiritual because it is not yet fully subject to the spirit, as long as it can be corrupted: so then too it will be called spiritual, when it will be able, by no corruption, to resist the spirit and eternity.

12. 5. Or if it seems still too little to have been shown that the Apostle said this saying on account of the transformation that is to be—when he says Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God by inheritance, nor will corruption possess incorruption by inheritance—attend to what he immediately adds and joins on: Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall indeed all rise, but we shall not all be changed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed.

Then he continues, and says also that which I mentioned a little before, to show what that transformation itself will be like. For he immediately says: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor 15:50-53). From this, then, it appears that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, because when it has put on incorruption and immortality, it will no longer be flesh and blood, but will be changed into a heavenly body.

This indeed we have treated as the occasion arose, because they are wont to lie in wait against this saying too, denying the resurrection of the body. For this question was set forth not about the body, but about the soul, which they think is taken in the Law in such a way that it is supposed to be blood: which we in no way understand thus. But although we are not concerned about the souls of beasts, with whom we have no fellowship of reason, nevertheless that which the Law said—that blood must be poured out, and not taken as food, because the blood is the soul—we say was set down in a sign, like many other things;

and almost all the sacred symbols of those Scriptures are full of signs and figures of the future preaching, which has now been declared through our Lord Jesus Christ. For the blood is the soul in the same way that the rock was Christ, as the Apostle says: For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4). Now it is known that the sons of Israel, when the rock was struck, drank water in the desert (See Num 20:11)—of whom the Apostle was speaking when he said these things; and yet he does not say, "The rock signified Christ," but he says, The rock was Christ. And again, lest it be taken carnally, he calls that rock spiritual; that is, he teaches that it is to be understood spiritually.

It would take long, and is now not necessary, to expound the sacred symbols of the same Law, except where they can be expounded briefly. But it is enough that those who raise calumnies about these things should know that we do not understand them as they are wont to mock; but in the way that the Apostles, understanding all things, expounded a few, so as to leave the rest to be understood by their successors according to the same rules.

13. 1. Concerning what is written in Deuteronomy: See that you do not forget the covenant of your God which he has written down, and make for yourselves likenesses and images; he added also, saying: Your God is a consuming fire, and a jealous God (Deut 4:23-24). These words from the Scriptures that Adimantus set down in this way. For we have undertaken to refute and rebut his calumnies. But already above, when he raised a calumny about the jealousy of God, I think enough has been answered. Let us remember, nevertheless, not only there but also here, that he charged the Scriptures concerning the jealousy of God in such a way as to add also what is commanded in those books by the Lord our God about not worshiping idols; as though he reproached the jealousy of God for no other reason than that by that very jealousy we are forbidden the worship of idols: he wishes, then, to seem to favor idols.

They do this for the reason that they may win, even for their most wretched and insane sect, the goodwill of the pagans too. But to this passage of the Law they also oppose that place where a certain man came to the Lord and said to him: Good Teacher, what shall I do to possess eternal life? To whom Jesus replied: Why do you ask me about the good? No one is good, except God alone (Mark 10:17-18). So that, evidently, from this we should think these things contrary, because in the Law it is said God is a consuming fire, and God is jealous; but in the Gospel No one is good, except God alone.

13. 2. And about jealousy indeed it has already been answered, that these words are not set down in the Scriptures so as to signify any disturbance or torment of God: but because nothing worthy can be said of God, on that account it has come to these words, which, when men have thought them unworthy, they may be compelled to learn that even those things which they suppose they say fittingly of the ineffable divine excellence are unworthy of the majesty of God; whose wisdom, when it was about to descend even to a human body, first descended even to human words.

Behold, I said "descended": which word, if I begin to examine it, I do not see that I have spoken properly; for nothing can descend except what can also be moved from place to place. For one who descends seems to leave a higher place and seek a lower one. But the Wisdom of God, since it is wholly present everywhere, can in no way migrate from place to place. About it John in the Gospel speaks better, as one who shared the Lord's breast. For he says: He was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him; and yet he himself adds and says: He came into his own, and his own did not receive him (John 1:10-11). How was he here, and how did he come, except that this ineffable sublimity, in order to be fitted to men, must be signified by human sounds; but in order that it may make men gods, must be understood by divine silence?

An account can therefore be given of why it was said so; yet nothing can be said worthily of God which is already, for that very reason, unworthy because it could be said. Take away from jealousy the error and the grief, what else will remain except a will guarding chastity and avenging the corruption of marriage? By what word, then, could it be better intimated, if not by "the jealousy of God," that we are called to the marriage of God, and that he does not wish us to be corrupted by base love, and that he punishes our unchastity, and loves chastity? For it is not in vain that it is commonly wont to be said: He who is not jealous does not love.

13. 3. To this also pertains what was said, a consuming fire; about which I ought not to dispute, but rather to ask them what fire the Lord said he had come to send into this world. For this was said in the Gospel, which they cannot accuse—not so as to honor Christ, but so as to deceive Christians. When this is recalled to them—how the Lord said I came to send fire into this world (Luke 12:49)—the wretches say: But that is something different. To them we reply: This too is different; do not be afraid. For Christ himself speaks also in the Old Testament, when he says I am a consuming fire (Deut 4:24; 9:3); he who speaks in the Gospel that he came to send fire into this world—that is, the Word of God, which he himself is. For he certainly expounded the old Scriptures to his disciples after the resurrection, beginning from Moses and all the Prophets, when the disciples themselves confessed that they had received fire, saying: Was not our heart burning within us on the way, when he opened the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24:32) He is the consuming fire: for divine love consumes the old life, and renews the man: so that, from the fact that God is a consuming fire, he may bring it about that we love him; but from the fact that God is jealous, that he himself may love us. Do not, then, fear the fire which is God; but fear the fire which God has prepared for heretics.

13. 4. For as to the place that Adimantus chose from the Gospel, to set against this passage of the Law as if contrary, before the unskilled, where the Lord says No one is good, except God alone (Mark 10:18), how often the goodness of God is found in the Old Testament, who could suffice to count?

Yet I will set down one, which is sung daily in the Church: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever (Ps 118:1, 29 (117:1, 29)). Surely this too, to a jealous God, as the Manichees suppose, seems to be contrary, and yet it is sung in the books of the Old Testament. Likewise that king who, when he was making the wedding for his son, found among those reclining a man not having a wedding garment; and, first addressing him by the name of friend, ordered him to be cast, with hands and feet bound, into the outer darkness (See Matt 22:2-13): to those who understand peevishly he does not seem good.

And if someone were to set forth this very passage of the Gospel, and, just as Adimantus does with the Old Testament, were thus to accuse the Gospel calumniously, praising rather the books of the Old Testament, where it is written Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever; and reproaching in the New, that a guest who was invited is cast into so great a torment on account of a garment; and if he did this assiduously with fraudulent perversity, so as to collect all the passages of gentleness from the Old Testament, and the passages of severity from the New, and to contend that these are opposed to each other, praising the Old and reproaching the New: he would similarly find people unskilled and miserably ignorant of the divine Scriptures, to whom he might persuade that the Old Testament rather than the New is to be retained.

And since these people do this from the other side—that is, reproaching the Old as though contrary to the New—I marvel that they do not consider that someone might at some time read both, and, with divine help, praise both when understood; and either grieve over the fraud and malice of these people as that of men, or beware of it as that of heretics, or mock it as that of the unskilled and the proud.

14. 1. Concerning what is written in Deuteronomy: According to the desire of your soul, slay and eat all flesh, according to the pleasure that the Lord has given you. But beware that you do not eat blood; rather, pour it out like water upon the earth (Deut 12:15-16). To these words of the Law Adimantus thinks it contrary that in the Gospel the Lord says: Let not your hearts be weighed down by surfeit, and drunkenness, and worldly cares (Luke 21:34); and that the Apostle says: It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine (Rom 14:21); and again: You cannot share in the table of the Lord, and the table of demons (1 Cor 10:21). But we say that all these things, whether those written in the Old or those in the New Testament, were set down as their own causes required, and we show that they are not opposed to each other. Although even he himself, in those words which he set down from the Old Testament, could have noticed that what was said does not pertain to immoderate gluttony—According to the desire of your soul, slay and eat all flesh—since there follows according to the pleasure that the Lord has given you. For the Lord did not give you immoderate pleasure, but as much as suffices for the sustenance and health of nature. But whoever follows immoderate gluttony follows his own vice, not that pleasure which the Lord gave: and therefore what is set down in the Gospel is not contrary: Let not your hearts be weighed down by surfeit, and drunkenness, and worldly cares. For when anyone fills himself with nothing but that pleasure which the Lord gave—that is, the modest and natural—his heart is not weighed down by surfeit, and drunkenness, and worldly cares.

14. 2. But as to what the Apostle says about not eating flesh and not drinking wine, he did not command this because he thought those things unclean, as these people suppose, and, themselves erring, hurl others into error, to whom they have persuaded such things: but since he himself set down the cause why he said this, this saying need not be interpreted or expounded by us. For it is enough to weave into this discourse the whole passage from the Apostle's Epistle, so that both the cause may manifestly appear why the Apostle said this, and the fraud of these people, who choose certain little fragments from the Scriptures by which to deceive the unskilled, not connecting what is written above and below, from which the will and intention of the writer can be understood.

Thus, then, the Apostle says: Receive the one who is weak in faith, but not in disputes about thoughts. One indeed believes he may eat all things; but he who is weak, let him eat vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who does not eat; and let not the one who does not eat judge the one who eats: for God has received him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. But he will stand: for the Lord is able to make him stand. One indeed judges between day and day, another judges every day alike. Let each one abound in his own understanding. He who regards the day, regards it for the Lord; and he who eats, eats for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who does not eat, does not eat for the Lord, and he gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for himself, and none dies for himself. For whether we live, we live for the Lord; or whether we die, we die for the Lord. Whether, then, we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord of the dead and the living.

But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the tribunal of the Lord. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each one of us will give an account for himself. Let us, therefore, no longer judge one another; but judge this rather, not to place a stumbling block or scandal before your brothers. I know, and am certain in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is common through him, except to him who thinks something is common; to him it is common. For if your brother is grieved on account of food, you no longer walk according to love. Do not, by your food, destroy him for whom Christ died. Let not our good, then, be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in this is pleasing to God, and approved by men. And so let us pursue the things that make for peace, and the things that are for mutual edification. Do not, on account of food, destroy the work of God. All things indeed are clean, but it is bad for the man who eats with offense. It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything in which your brother is offended. The faith that you have, keep to yourself before God. Blessed is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who makes distinctions, if he eats, is condemned, because it is not from faith. But everything that is not from faith is sin (Rom 14:1-23).

Does it have any need of anyone's interpretation, that it may be understood why the Apostle said this; and with how great a malice they tear off certain definite passages from the Scriptures, by which to ensnare the unskilled? For the Apostle both said that all things are clean according to faith; and that they are unclean to him who thinks them unclean; and that one must then abstain from them, when they are received with offense—that is, when some weak person thinks he must abstain from all flesh, lest he fall upon sacrificial flesh; and therefore he may suppose that the one who eats does it in honor of idols, and from this be gravely offended: while the sacrificial flesh itself, if it is received from faith by one who does not know, defiles no one.

Hence in another place the same apostle forbids inquiry, when something is bought from the meat market, or when anyone, invited by some unbeliever, sees set before him at his table meats which these people think unclean—not on account of sacrifice, but because they are meats—when the Apostle proclaims that all things are clean, and that every creation of God is good, and that all things are sanctified through the word and prayer: and yet that one must abstain from them, if perhaps some weak person is offended.

And in one place he most plainly indicated these people, when he says that in the most recent times there will be certain people forbidding to marry, abstaining from foods that God created (See 1 Tim 4:1-5). For he properly designates those who abstain from such foods not so as either to bridle their own desire or to spare the weakness of another, but because they think the meats themselves unclean, and deny that God is their creator. But let us hold to the apostolic discipline, which says that all things are clean to the clean (See Titus 1:15), the evangelical moderation being preserved, so that our hearts may not be weighed down by surfeit, and drunkenness, and worldly cares.

14. 3. For as to that very thing which the Apostle says, You cannot share in the table of the Lord, and the table of demons, I do not see why the Manichees believed it should be set against this passage of the Law, and as if contrary. For the Law does not speak of sacrifices, when in Deuteronomy it is said: According to the desire of your soul, slay and eat all flesh, according to the pleasure that the Lord has given you (Deut 12:15); but of foods that pertain to a person's nourishment. But since the Manichees say that even when any animals are prepared for a person's supper there is a sacrifice, according to their own understanding they thought these things contrary. For this reason they also recalled that place where the Apostle says: What the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; when the Apostle was most plainly speaking of the victims that are offered in the temple to demons, not of these foods that men prepare for themselves.

For he says thus: What then? Do I say that something sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God. I do not wish you to become partners of demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord? Are we stronger than he? All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient: all things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek what is his own, but that which is another's. Eat everything that is sold in the meat market, asking no questions on account of conscience. For the earth is the Lord's, and its fullness. If any of the unbelievers invites you, and you wish to go, eat everything that is set before you, making no distinctions on account of conscience. But if anyone says to you, This is sacrificial, do not eat, on account of him who pointed it out, and on account of conscience: conscience, I say, not your own, but the other's. For why is my liberty judged by another's conscience? If I partake with thanks, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? Whether, therefore, you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:19-31).

Let the Manichees attend to these things, and see how it was said in Deuteronomy: According to the desire of your soul, slay and eat all flesh, according to the pleasure that the Lord has given you. For what was commanded to the Jews about certain flesh not to be eaten, and was said to be unclean, has its force toward the signification of unclean people, who through figures were designated in the old Scriptures. For just as that ox, whose mouth he forbids to be bound when it treads out the grain, signifies the evangelist, as the Apostle most plainly expounds (See Deut 25:4; 1 Cor 9:7-9; 1 Tim 5:17-18); so too those things that were forbidden signify certain uncleannesses of people, who are not received into the fellowship of the body of Christ—that is, into the stable and everlasting Church. For as to what pertains to foods, that absolutely nothing is unclean, but that it is bad for the man who eats with offense, most manifestly appears.

15. 1. Concerning what is written in Leviticus: Separate the unclean from the clean, and let no one eat the flesh of the camel, the ass, the hare, the pig, the eagle, the kite, the raven, the vulture, and the rest (See Lev 11). Nowhere can the soul of this man, most full of guile and fraud, be more manifestly caught—he who set forth passages from both Testaments as if at odds and contrary to each other—than in this place where he recalled that it is written in Leviticus that one should abstain from the flesh of certain animals. For to this saying he believed must be opposed that from the Gospel where the Lord says: Nothing entering into a man defiles him; but the things that come out of him defile him (Matt 15:11). If he did this unknowingly, nothing is more blind: but if knowingly, nothing is more wicked. Had he not himself a little before set down the Apostle's testimony, which says: It is good, brothers, not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine (Rom 14:21), while he desires from the New Testament to oppose the Old, where it was said: According to the desire of your soul, slay and eat all flesh (Deut 12:15)?

How, then, does the saying of the Lord now please him, by which he says that nothing entering into a man defiles him, but that the things that come out of a man defile him? Where can this man hide himself from this saying? Where will he flee, let him tell me, when by a perverse and superstitious imagining of continence he commands that the uncleanness of meats is to be fled and separated from the foods of the holy?

For surely, if it is true that the things which enter into a man do not defile, then with great error the Manichees say that foods are unclean, when men feed on flesh. But if such foods are unclean, what will they do with this testimony, which was brought forth by evangelical and divine authority, where the Lord says that a man is not defiled by the things that enter into him, but by the things that come out of him? Or will they perhaps say, as they are wont to say when the authority of the Scriptures presses them, that this passage was inserted into the Gospel by corrupters of the Scriptures? Why, then, does Adimantus use this passage as a witness, and from it try to attack the Old Testament—from which he himself is laid low?

For when some Catholic Christian, a venerator and understander of both Scriptures, has answered him that these things are not contrary—because those things about the flesh of certain animals, which the people still carnal were commanded not to eat, were set down for the signification of human morals, which the Church, which is the body of the Lord, cannot receive into the stable and everlasting bond of its unity, rejecting them as unclean foods, and not turning them into its own inward parts; so that all those precepts imposed on the carnal people might prophesy the future discipline of the spiritual people: and therefore they do not conflict with the saying of the Lord, by which he says most truly that a man is not defiled by the things that enter into him through food. For that saying imposes burdens on slaves; this one now shakes off from the free the yoke of slavery. And yet that one was said in such a way that the burdens of slaves foretell the faith of the free. For all these things, as the Apostle says, happened to them in figure; but they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11). If, then, the things they suffered happened in figure, they received in figure the things of which they were warned.

15. 2. When, therefore, I have answered these things, and have shown in this way that these two passages, compared from the two Testaments, are not contrary, what will this man do, against whom speaks the most weighty testimony of the witness whom he himself brought forward against his adversary? For he himself recalled the testimony from the Gospel, the Lord saying that a man is not defiled by the foods that enter into him: and he himself does not cease to warn and teach that one must abstain from flesh as from unclean foods. And yet he felt how great a blow he was inflicting on himself, and with how great a stroke, struck back, he was wounding himself. For lest anyone should question him and say: How, then, do you forbid feeding on flesh, if the Lord says, as you yourself recall, Nothing entering into a man defiles him; but the things that come out of him defile him (Matt 15:11)? he wished, as it were, to apply medicine without cause to a deadly wound. For thus he set down that very evangelical testimony.

In the Gospel, he says, the Lord says to the crowd: Hear, and understand: Nothing entering into a man defiles him, and so on. The fact, then, that he recalled that the Lord said this to the crowd shows nothing else than that he did what he did not from ignorance, but from malice: so that he might afterward say to his Hearers that the Lord spoke these things to the crowd, not to the few holy, such as they themselves wish to seem; so that, since they permit their Hearers, as still unclean, to feed on flesh, while for themselves, as already clean, they think it wicked and abominable, it might seem that the Lord too held this view, in that he taught these things not to a few holy, but to the crowds.

O most wicked man, secure in the negligence of the human race for concealing his deceptions! For he did not believe that anyone would exist who would take up the Gospel, and read it with knowledge, and find the man, in those very meadows in which the Lord pastures his flocks, hiding snares for the unwary and less provident. For the disciples, disturbed by these words, and not believing that the Lord had spoken properly but rather figuratively, when he said that a man is not defiled by the things that enter into him through foods—since the disciples themselves were also Jews, who had been taught from boyhood that the foods of certain flesh must be fled—coming to him, said to him: Do you know that the Pharisees, on hearing the word, were scandalized? But he, answering, said: Every planting that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them be; they are blind, and leaders of the blind. But if a blind man leads a blind man, both fall into a pit.

When, therefore, he called the unbelief of the Jews a planting that the heavenly Father had not planted, Peter, nevertheless, still thinking that that was a parable, and that for this reason the Jews were rebuked and called blind, because they could not understand it, answering, said to him: Explain to us this parable. And he, most manifestly showing that it was not a parable, but a proper saying, said to them: Are you also still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything that enters into the mouth goes into the belly, and is cast out into the privy? But the things that come out of the mouth come out of the heart, and these defile a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies; these are the things that defile a man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man (Matt 15:12-20).

Now it was about unwashed hands that the Jews had raised the question, on the occasion of which the Lord pronounced this saying generally about the things that enter into the mouth, and go into the belly, and are cast out into the privy—that is, about our foods. Although, then, it is written that he said this when the crowds had been called to him—Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth—nevertheless, with what fear this man added this to his words, in which he recalled a testimony of this kind, sufficiently appears, as was said a little before, so that he might have what to answer to those who had raised the question to him as to why the chief men of the Manichees think it wicked for themselves to feed on flesh: namely, so that what the Lord said might seem to have been granted only to the crowds, not to the Elect.

But since from what follows it is declared that the Lord answered thus even to Peter questioning him apart, with the disciples listening, whom he was certainly leading to the summit of the Church, in such a way that he testified that he had not said those things through a parable, and showed that they pertain to all: these people have nothing from which they may take foods away from the throats of men, and bind them with the snare of superstition.

15. 3. Perhaps one of them may say: Explain, then, what the flesh of the pig signifies, and of the camel, and the hare, and the kite, and the raven, and the rest, from which abstinence is commanded in the Law. I am unwilling, because it is long. But suppose I cannot; can no one, on that account? And there are already countless volumes in which these things have been expounded. Yet for refuting these people it is enough for us that those observances are a shadow of things to come—not I, but the Apostle says so—when he both forbids them to be observed in a servile way, and yet declares that they signify something, saying: Let no one, then, judge you in food, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or a new moon, or sabbaths, which is a shadow of things to come (Col 2:16-17).

And so those things to come which were signified by those observances, after they came through the Lord Jesus Christ, the servile observances were taken away: but their interpretations are held by the free. For whatever signified the future Church is prophecy. But you have the same Apostle saying: Do not spurn the Spirit, do not extinguish prophecy; read all things, hold fast the things that are good (1 Thess 5:19-21). The divine Scripture, then, is to be read, and the dispensation of the Holy Spirit known, and the prophecy considered; and carnal slavery is to be cast off, and a free understanding retained.

16. 1. Concerning what is written in Deuteronomy: Observe and sanctify the day that the Lord has commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but on the seventh day, the sabbath, feast to the Lord your God, doing no work yourself, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, your ox, and your ass, all your beasts of burden, and your sojourner. And so your manservant and your maidservant shall rest, just as you also. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God rescued you with a mighty hand and an uplifted arm. Therefore the Lord commanded you to keep the seventh day (Deut 5:12-15).

And again in Genesis it is written how he speaks to Abraham about circumcision: Keep my covenant, he says, you and your seed, which will be after you. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your seed: you shall circumcise every male in the flesh of their foreskin; and let this be a sign of the covenant between me and you. And on the eighth day you shall circumcise all the males in your race, so that you may circumcise also the home-born and the purchased, except the foreigner: and this will be the covenant in your race. And every male who does not circumcise his foreskin will lose his soul from the midst of the people, because he has broken my covenant (Gen 17:9-14).

All these words of the Old Testament Adimantus sets forth, in order to oppose to them from the New Testament, and he affirms to be contrary the things that the Lord says in the Gospel about the proselyte: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who travel around sea and land to make one proselyte; and when you have made him, he will be a son of hell, much more than you are (Matt 23:15). As though indeed the Lord called the proselyte a son of hell because he is circumcised and observes the sabbath; and not rather because he is compelled to imitate the lost morals of the Jews and their depraved way of life—not in that they observe the precepts of the Law, but in that they act against the Law.

This he says most plainly of them in another place, where he says that they reject the commandment of God in order to confirm their own ordinance (See Matt 15:3-6): because, although the Law commanded that father and mother be honored, they themselves devised how parents may be dishonored.

And likewise when he says to them: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who have the key of the kingdom of heaven, and neither enter yourselves, nor permit others to enter (Luke 11:52).

Or when in another place he commanded his hearers to obey the sayings of the Pharisees and scribes, but not to imitate their deeds. For he says: They sit on the seat of Moses: what they say, do; but what they do, do not be willing to do: for they say, and do not do (Matt 23:2-3). In which place the Lord both confirms the authority of the Law that was given through Moses, and yet most plainly shows that the morals of those who did not obey the Law they had received are to be guarded against and fled. But by these their perversities they brought it about that, when some gentile passed over to their Law—that is, became a proselyte—he had their morals, and became a son of hell, much more than they themselves were. For they took great pains that someone from the Gentiles might become a Jew, and, once made a Jew, they compelled him to imitate their most wicked morals.

16. 2. Nor could Adimantus the Manichee notice that that which he recalls from the Apostle as if contrary is altogether not contrary; because his whole eye was intent not on inquiry, but on reproach of the Scripture. For he recalls the Apostle saying: Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised: because the foreskin is nothing, and circumcision is nothing, but the observance of God's precepts (1 Cor 7:18-19). For what is more manifest than that the Apostle commands this—that each one should remain as he was called? For when the realities came, of which those observances were shadows, this was done: that it might be shown that hope is to be placed not in the shadows themselves, but in those very realities which those shadows signified were to come—that is, Christ and the Church.

And therefore all those things were now empty: yet the Apostle commands that they be not removed as harmful, but despised as superfluous; so that, if some Jew had believed in Christ, he should not, on account of giving offense to his own people, be forbidden to remain in those superfluous things, nor yet should he think his salvation was established in them: for it is not those signs, but the things that are signified by them, that lead into salvation.

And therefore the foreskin is nothing, and circumcision is nothing, but the observance of God's commandments. And as for what he says in another place, Would that those who disturb you might even be cut off (Gal 5:12), the Apostle does not say this because circumcision is contrary to the Gospel, as the Manichees think: but this is contrary to the Gospel, that anyone, deserting the reality which is figured by that shadow, should follow the emptiness of the shadow itself. This is what those wished who imposed on Gentiles believing in Christ the yoke of circumcision as if necessary for salvation, when now a shadow was not to be figured in the body, but the reality itself borne in the heart.

16. 3. And as for what he says, You observe days, and sabbaths, and solemnities; I fear for you, lest I have labored among you in vain (Gal 4:10-11), it is not written as Adimantus sets it down. For the Apostle does not name the sabbath there. For he says: You observe days and years, and seasons; I fear for you, lest I have labored among you in vain. But suppose it was said about the sabbath. Do not we too say that these things are not to be observed, but rather those which are signified by them? For they observed them in a servile way, not understanding to the signification and foretelling of what realities they pertained. This the Apostle blames in them, and in all who serve the creation rather than the Creator (See Rom 1:25). For we too solemnly celebrate both the Lord's day and Easter, and any other Christian festivals of days. But because we understand to what they pertain, we observe not the times, but the things signified by those times. The Manichees, however, reproach them as though they observe no days and times. But when they are questioned about these according to the opinion of their sect, they try to expound everything in such a way that they may seem to observe not the times themselves, but the realities of which those are signs. And that these realities are fabulous and most false is shown in other places. Now this has been said in order that they may be compelled to confess with their own mouth that such things can be celebrated reasonably: and therefore it is manifest that the circumcision of the flesh was both rightly imposed on slaves, and rightly understood by the free.

We reject it, then, as carnal, with the Apostle, and we approve it as spiritual, with the Apostle: and we do not observe the rest of the sabbath in respect of time; but we understand the temporal sign, and we direct the gaze of the mind to the eternal rest that is signified by that sign. And so we reject the observance of times with the Apostle, and we hold the understanding of temporal signs with the Apostle: and we so prove the difference of the two Testaments that in the one are the burdens of slaves, in the other the glory of the free; in the one is recognized the prefiguration of our possession, in the other is held the possession itself. The Apostle interprets the sabbath to the Hebrews, when he says: There remains, then, a sabbath rest for the people of God (Heb 4:9).

He interprets circumcision too, when he says of Abraham: And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:11). And so I hold the apostolic interpretation spiritually: the carnal observance of slavery I despise by liberty, venerating God as the author of both Testaments, who both, to the old man fleeing, opposed as a master what he might fear, and, to the new man returning, opened as a father what he might love.

17. 1. Concerning what is written in Exodus: If you listen with your ear to my voice, and do whatever I command you, I will hate those who hate you; and I will afflict those who afflict you: my angel will go before you, and will lead you to the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, and the Jebusite, and the Girgashite; and you shall kill them. You shall not worship their gods, nor do their works; but overthrowing, overthrow them, and blot out their memory (Exod 23:22-24).

These words from the old books being recalled in this way, Adimantus opposes as if contrary what is written in the Gospel, the Lord saying: But I say to you: Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44).

In this place the first thing to be seen is that it ought to have been enough for a man wishing to show things as if contrary, that he pointed out that it was written in the old Law about killing enemies. For the Lord, concerning loving enemies, surely commanded it about human beings, who, through our patience and love, can be converted to salvation—as anyone understands and as has very often been shown by examples.

What, then, does he mean by thinking that the following must be added, where it is written: You shall not worship their gods, nor do their works; but overthrowing, overthrow them, and blot out their memory; unless that the Manichees compel us to love even the gods of the Gentiles? And what the Lord says in the Gospel, Love your enemies, they think pertains not only to human beings, but also to demons, or even to idols. But if it is so, who would not detest this madness? But if they do not think this, this man erred greatly, who wished to recall that the superstitions of the Gentiles were commanded to be overthrown in the Old Testament, while he wished to oppose, as if contrary, what is written in the New about loving enemies.

17. 2. But we say that neither is that which was said to that people in the old books about killing human enemies contrary to this evangelical precept by which the Lord bids us to love our enemies: since that killing of enemies was suited to a people still carnal, to whom the Law had been given as a kind of tutor, as the Apostle says (See Gal 3:24). But those who at that time among that people were holy and spiritual men—very few, such as Moses, such as the Prophets—with what mind they did that killing of enemies, and whether they loved those whom they were killing, lies much hidden from the unlearned and impious, who love their own blindness; who, since they are not fit to see these things, must rather be pressed by the weight of authority.

For what is it that the Apostle says: I indeed, absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, the one who has so acted: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together with my spirit, by the power of the Lord Jesus, to hand over such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor 5:3-5)?

For what does that killing have, which these people greatly exaggerate and invidiously bandy about, except the destruction of the flesh? But because the Apostle expounded with what mind he did it, he sufficiently declared that vengeance upon some enemy can proceed with love. And yet here too, in another way perhaps, the destruction of the flesh which comes about through repentance can be understood.

But they themselves read apocryphal writings, which they even say are most uncorrupted, where it is written that the apostle Thomas cursed a man by whom, through imprudence, he was struck with the palm of the hand, not knowing who he was, and that that curse came at once to effect. For when that man, since he was a servant of the banquet, had gone out to the fountain to bring water, he was killed and torn apart by a lion. And so that this might be made manifest, for the terror of others, a dog brought his hand to the tables where the Apostle was banqueting: and thus, when the cause was sought by those who did not know, and was disclosed to them, they were turned to great fear and great honor of the Apostle; and from this arose an occasion of commending the Gospel.

If someone wished to turn the teeth of the Manichees against themselves, how bitingly he would reproach these things! But because there too it is not kept silent with what mind it was done, the love of the one taking vengeance is seen. For thus it is read in that writing, that the Apostle prayed for the one upon whom vengeance was taken in time, that he might be spared in the future judgment. If, then, in the time of the New Testament, in which love above all is commended, a fear of visible punishments was divinely instilled into carnal people, how much more must it be understood that this was suited, in the time of the Old Testament, to that people whom the fear of the Law, as of a tutor, restrained?

For this is the briefest and plainest difference of the two Testaments: fear and love: the former pertains to the old man, the latter to the new; both, nevertheless, brought forth and joined by the most merciful dispensation of one God. And in the old Scripture the mind of those taking vengeance is kept silent, because very few who were spiritual knew, by divine revelations, what they were doing, so that the people, to whom terror was useful, might be tamed by a most severe command: so that, just as they saw given into their hands, to be killed, the impious enemies and worshipers of idols, so they themselves might dread being given into the hands of their enemies, if they should despise the commands of the true God, and slip into the worship of idols and the impieties of the Gentiles. For upon those who similarly sinned, vengeance was not dissimilarly taken.

But all this temporal vengeance terrifies weak souls, so as to instruct those nurtured under discipline, and to be able to turn them away from everlasting and ineffable punishments: because carnal people fear more what God avenges in the present, than what he threatens as future.

17. 3. There can, then, be love in the one taking vengeance. Which each one proves in his own son, when, as the son flows down into the worst morals, he restrains him with the severest coercion, and so much the more, the more he loves him and thinks that in this way he can be corrected. But men do not kill the sons whom they love, when they wish to correct them: because many regard this life as a great good, and place all their reason for wishing to raise their sons in their hope for this life. But faithful and wise men, who believe there is another, better life, and know it as far as they can, do not themselves take vengeance by killing when they wish to correct their sons, because they believe they can be corrected in this life: but God, who knows what he assigns to each, takes vengeance by killing upon whom he wills, whether through men or by a hidden order of things; not because he hates them insofar as they are men, but insofar as they are sinners. For in the old books themselves we read it said to God: And you have hated nothing of the things you have made (Wis 11:24); but he disposes all things, whether through punishments or through rewards, with justice as moderator.

Was not the apostle Paul speaking to faithful Christians, when he said: But let a man test himself, and so eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. For this reason there are among you many weak and sick, and many sleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would surely not be judged. But while we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, lest we be condemned with the world (1 Cor 11:28-32)? Behold, it is manifest that God corrects with love, not only by weaknesses and sicknesses, but also by temporal deaths, those whom he does not wish to condemn with the world.

17. 4. Let these people attend to these things, and see how even the impious nations could be given into the hands of a people—though still carnal, yet worshiping one God—to be killed by it; while nevertheless, in that people, if any were spiritual, they understood, without hatred of anyone, the dispensation of God: and how it is not contrary that the Lord commanded us in the Gospel to love our enemies; concerning whom, nevertheless, he himself promises vengeance, when he introduces the likeness of that judge who, although he was unjust, neither fearing God nor revering men, could nevertheless not endure the daily appeals of the widow woman asking that she be avenged, and heard her, lest he suffer weariness any further: from comparison with whom he said that God, who is most kind and most just, much more avenges his elect upon their enemies (See Luke 18:2-8).

Let these people dare to raise a question against this, and say, if they can: What is it, that you commanded us to love our enemies, and dispose to avenge us upon them? Or will he perhaps, against the will of his own holy ones, act by punishing and condemning those whom they love? Rather, let they themselves be turned from this calumnious blindness to God, and understand his will in both Testaments, lest they be found on the left hand among those to whom the Lord will say: Go into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat (Matt 25:41-42); and other such things.

For it displeases these wretches that God handed over their enemies to his people to be killed; and they themselves forbid bread to be given to a beggar—not an enemy, but a suppliant. Let them rather understand that vengeance can be without hatred, which few understand: and yet as long as it is not understood, so long is it necessary that the reader, in the books of both Testaments, be tossed about with great labor or error, and think the Scriptures contrary to themselves.

This vengeance without hatred the Apostles had not yet conceived in their mind, when, angry at those by whom they were not received in hospitality, they asked the Lord whether he wished them to call down fire from heaven, as Elijah had done, by which fire the inhospitable men might be consumed. Then the Lord answered them, saying that they did not know of what spirit they were sons, and that he himself had come to set free, not to destroy (See Luke 9:53-56): since they, with a hostile mind, desired to destroy those whom they wished to be consumed by fire. But afterward, when they had been filled with the Holy Spirit, and had been made perfect, who could now love even enemies, they received the power of taking vengeance, because they could now take vengeance without hatred.

This power the apostle Peter used in that book which these people do not accept, since it manifestly contains the coming of the Paraclete—that is, of the Holy Spirit the comforter—whom he sent to those mourning, when he himself had ascended into heaven from their eyes. For a comforter is sent to the sorrowful, according to that saying of the same Lord: Blessed are those who mourn, for they themselves will be comforted (Matt 5:5). He himself also says: Then the sons of the bridegroom will mourn, when the bridegroom has been taken away from them (Matt 9:15).

In that book, then, where it is most plainly declared that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord had promised as comforter, had come (See Acts 2:4), we read that men fell at the saying of Peter, and that a husband and wife died, who had dared to lie to the Holy Spirit (See Acts 5:1-10). This these people, with great blindness, find fault with, while in the apocrypha they read as something great both that which I recalled about the apostle Thomas, and that Peter's own daughter was made paralytic by her father's prayers, and that the gardener's daughter died at the prayer of Peter himself; and they answer that this was to their advantage, that the one might be released by that paralysis, and the other might die: yet they do not deny that it was done at the prayers of the Apostle.

But who told them: It was not to the advantage of the impious nations to be killed, which they pretend to wonder at, mocking, that they were divinely handed into the hands of the people of the Jews? But since they did those things not from hatred, but with the good mind of the Apostle, from what do these people prove against the minds of the spiritual men who were in that people, that they hated those whom, through them, divine justice was bidding to be taken from this life? Let them rather check their rashness, and not deceive the unskilled, who either have no leisure to read, or are unwilling to read, or read with a perverse mind; and do not attend that both the mercy and the severity of God are commended in the letters of both Testaments.

For about the love of an enemy, that evil be not repaid for evil, it is read in the old books: Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands. If I have repaid with evils those who repaid me, let me deservedly fall, empty, before my enemies (Ps 7:3-4 (7:4-5)). Who would say this, except one who knew that it pleases God that no one repay evil for evil? But this is the mark of the perfect, that they hate in sinners nothing but their sins, but love the men themselves; and when they take vengeance, they take it not with the bitterness of savagery, but with the moderation of justice; lest the very relaxation of the sin should harm the sinner more than the penalty of vengeance.

Nor yet did just men do this, except by divine authority; lest anyone should think it was permitted to him at large to kill whom he wills, or to prosecute by judgment, or to afflict with any penalties whatever. But sometimes the divine authority itself is openly set down in the Scriptures, sometimes, however, it is concealed, so that the reader may both be instructed by the manifest and exercised by the obscure.

17. 6. Certainly David received into his power King Saul, his enemy and persecutor, exceedingly ungrateful and exceedingly hostile, so that he might do to him what he willed; and he chose rather to spare than to kill. For he had not been commanded to kill, but neither was he forbidden: indeed, he had even heard divinely that he might with impunity do whatever he wished to his enemy; and yet he turned such great power to gentleness (See 1 Sam 24:3-8; 26:8-12). Let it be told me whom he feared, when he was unwilling to kill. Nor can we say that he feared the man whom he had received into his power; nor God, who had given him. Where, then, there was neither difficulty in killing nor fear, love spared the enemy.

Behold, that warrior David fulfilled the precept of Christ which we have received, that we love our enemies. And would that these people would imitate this, who have twisted the human affection of mercy into who knows what cruel ravings! For while they believe that bread weeps, which cannot happen, they do not hold it out to the man whom they see weeping. Perhaps they may say, as the blind are wont to hurl insane reproaches, that David was better, who spared his enemy, than God, who gave him the power of killing: as if indeed God did not know to whom he gave this power.

He certainly knew the will of his servant, but in order that to other men also there might become known, for imitation, that love of an enemy which in David's heart was already known to God, he gave into his power the enemy whom he did not yet wish to be killed, on account of a certain dispensation of things which had to be fulfilled through him. Thus both the goodness of David was commended, so that men might have what they should love; and the malice of King Saul was deferred to a more fitting end, so that men might have what they should fear.

18. 1. Concerning what is written in Deuteronomy: If you listen with your ear to the voice of the Lord your God, you are blessed in your field, you are blessed in your meadow, blessed is the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your land, and the breedings of your beasts of burden, and the herd of your cattle, and the flock of your sheep; you are blessed in your coming in and going out (Deut 28:1, 3-4, 6).

To this passage they say that this in the Gospel is contrary: If anyone wishes to follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but suffers the loss of his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt 16:24, 26)

But by that rule it is shown not to be contrary, by which it ought now to be known that to a people still carnal, carnal and temporal rewards were fittingly promised, yet by one God, whose is every creation, both higher and lower. For certainly Adimantus himself set down a testimony from the Gospel, where the Lord says: Do not swear, neither by heaven, because it is his throne; nor by earth, because it is the footstool of his feet (Matt 5:35).

Which indeed is written also in the old books: Heaven is my throne, earth the footstool of my feet (Isa 66:1). What wonder, then, if he gives the goods of his throne spiritually to those who serve him spiritually, and gives the goods of the footstool of his feet carnally to those who serve him carnally; since the spirit is higher, and the flesh lower, as the heavenly things are higher, and the earthly lower? Although all those things—that is, the field, and the meadow, and the fruit of the womb, and the fruit of the land, and of the beasts of burden, and the herd of cattle, and the flock of sheep—can also be understood spiritually. But now this treatment does not pertain to the matter.

But if even in the New Testament itself, whose reward and inheritance pertains to the new man, the Lord nevertheless promises to those very ones whom he wishes to be despisers of temporal things, so that they may serve him in the Gospel, a multiplication of these same things in this world, saying that they will receive in this world a hundredfold, but in the world to come eternal life (See Matt 19:29); as also in the old Scripture it is said: To a faithful man the whole world is wealth (Prov 17:6 (17:16)).

Whence the Apostle exults, saying: As having nothing, and possessing all things (2 Cor 6:10); if, then, in the New Testament, besides the eternal possession which is promised to the saints, the multiplication of this possession too, which is to pass away, is not withdrawn, and becomes the more abundant the more contemptuously it is possessed; how much more, in the Old Testament, ought the rewards of the carnal people to have been such, with the one and true God himself, the governor of all times, moderating and administering all things according to the time.

18. 2. But lest these people think that these things are despised in the books of the New Testament alone, let them hear the prophet casting away such happiness, and singing that one must take refuge in the one Lord God.

For he says thus: Rescue me from the malignant sword, and deliver me from the hand of the sons of strangers, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and whose right hand is a right hand of iniquity. Whose sons are like new plants established in their youth. Their daughters arranged and adorned like the likeness of a temple. Their storehouses full, overflowing from this into that. Their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their goings forth; their oxen fat. There is no breach of fence, nor going forth, nor outcry in their streets. They have called blessed the people that has these things; blessed is the people whose God is the Lord himself (Ps 144:11-15 (143:11-15)).

Let them attend, then, how this happiness in impious men is mocked, and how the whole of blessedness is fixed unshaken in God alone. For those people call blessed the people that has these things; but blessed is the people whose God is the Lord himself.

But as for the fact that they thought this too contrary to this passage of the Old Testament, that the Lord says: Everyone who is ashamed of me or of my words in this adulterous and sinful nation, the Son of man too will be ashamed of him, when he comes in the glory of his Father and the praise of his holy angels (Mark 8:38); how this pertains to the contempt of temporal things I do not see.

But if it pertains for this reason—lest anyone, terrified by the losses of such things, should either blush to confess Christ, or fear to—what do they have to say? Since we too say that these are gifts of God in such a way that they are nevertheless of the lowest sort, and, in comparison with the saving confession, are not only to be lost, but even of one's own accord to be cast away: yet to carnal people who love these things, and do not yet grasp the heavenly promises, lest they should seek them from idols and demons, they were usefully promised by the Lord God.

19. 1. Concerning what is written in the Law: I am he who gives riches to my friends, and poverty to my enemies. To this saying they oppose what the Lord says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:3); and: Woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation (Luke 6:24). But why are they unwilling to behold also the other things in the Gospel? For where it is written Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, there follows: Blessed are the meek, for they themselves will possess the earth by inheritance. Behold, they have the friends of God being made rich by the inheritance of the earth. But when that rich man is reduced to such great want that he begs from the poor man whom he had neglected that the moisture of his parched tongue be dripped on with a short finger dipped in water (See Luke 16:24), let them understand how the enemies of God become poor, and let them recognize that this is what is written in the Law: I am he who gives riches to my friends, and poverty to my enemies.

19. 2. For that these temporal riches are despised in the old Scripture too I have both taught above, and whoever wishes to read will find it in countless places.

Whence is also that: Better is a little for the just man, than the many riches of sinners (Ps 37:16 (36:16)).

And that: The law of your mouth is good to me, above thousands of gold and silver (Ps 119:72 (118:72)).

And that: The judgments of God are true, justified in themselves, desirable above gold and much precious stone (Ps 19:9-10 (18:10)).

And that: Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and immortal is he who sees prudence. For it is better to gain her than treasures of gold and silver. She is more precious than the finest stones, no evil resists her; she is well known to all who approach her, and to those who consider her diligently. But everything precious is not worthy of her (Prov 3:13-15).

And that: For this reason I wished, and understanding was given to me; and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came into me. And I preferred her to kingdoms and thrones, and I reckoned wealth to be nothing in comparison with her. Nor did I compare to her a precious stone: since all gold, in comparison with her, is a little sand, and silver will be esteemed as mud before her (Wis 7:7-9).

If these people either read these things, or read them not impiously, they would see that all things in the Scriptures of both Testaments, both for seeking and for fleeing, both for taking and for rejecting, are in harmony with themselves and ordered in their own degrees.

20. 1. Concerning what is written in the Law: If you walk in the law, and keep my precepts, I will give rains in their season, and the earth will produce its fruits, and the trees their apples, and your vintages will follow upon the harvests, and the sowing upon the vintages: and you will be filled, and you will sit in peace in your land, and you will sleep, and there will be no one to terrify you: and I will destroy every wild beast from your land; and you will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword: and five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword: and I will come, and I will bless you, and I will multiply you, and I will set you in order. You will eat the old that has grown old, and you will cast out the old before the new (Lev 26:3-10).

Now no one ought to demand of us that we show how fittingly God promised these things to that people. For we have said much about this matter, and to one for whom this is too little, he is exceedingly slow. But still, as to what they say is contrary to this passage too from the New Testament—namely that which the Lord says: Do not carry gold, nor silver, nor coins in your belts; no wallet on the way, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staff; for the worker is worthy of his hire (Matt 10:9-10): what wonder if he granted these things to the Evangelists? Was the Jewish people called to this ministry? Yet all these things must be searched out spiritually, lest the Lord himself seem to have acted, against his own precepts, like impious men, he who even had money bags, in which money was carried for necessary sustenance (See John 12:6). Unless perhaps they will say that to have money in belts is a sin, but in money bags is not a sin. But that these things were not commanded to the Apostles, but permitted, is understood from this, that the apostle Paul, working with his own hands, sought his sustenance, not abusing that power, as he himself says, which the Lord gave to the Evangelists (See Acts 18:3; 1 Cor 4:12; 1 Thess 2:9; 2 Thess 3:8-9). For what is permitted by the Lord, it is also lawful not to do: but what is commanded, unless it is done, is a sin.

20. 2. They add also that about the rich man, to whom God had said: Fool, this night I will require your soul from you; but the things you have prepared, whose will they be? (Luke 12:20) and they say it is no less contrary to this passage of the Law: since in the former the emptiness of vain gladness was mocked, because it held those uncertain things as certain; whereas to the people of Israel the omnipotence of the one promising made that promise certain.

Whence the apostle Paul, writing to Timothy about the rich of this world, whom he knew to have their place among the members of the Church, speaks thus: Charge the rich of this world not to be proud in mind, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who furnishes us all things abundantly to enjoy: let them do good, let them be rich in good works, let them give readily, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, that they may lay hold of true life (1 Tim 6:17-19).

Who here would not understand that it is not blameworthy to have these things, but to love them and place one's hope in them, and to prefer them, or even compare them, to truth, justice, wisdom, faith, a good conscience, the love of God and neighbor—in all of which a pious soul is rich, in its secret places, before the eyes of God? But in order that God may be loved, who lavishes upon those who love him all these invisible and eternal things—that is, gives his very self, full of all these, to those who love him—in order, then, that he himself may be loved, even at that time when the carnal soul, entangled in the affections of the flesh, knows not how to desire anything but temporal things, it must be persuaded that God gives these things too to man; because it is both true, and most usefully believed. This was done for the people of Israel through those promises which the wretches most ignorantly mock, so that even in these lowest things they might grow accustomed, as far as they could, to love God, although there fear works more. Yet all these temporal gifts are figures of the eternal gifts, and that victory over enemies prefigures the victory over the devil and his angels.

20. 3. And as for what these people added as if contrary to the Old Testament—that the Apostle says God delights not in strife and dissension, but in peace (See 1 Cor 14:33)—let them know that such a God is proclaimed in those Scriptures, from whom no one can take away his peace; not such a one as they themselves proclaim, who, fearing lest war should rush upon his regions, sent his members far off, so that they might endure foreign wars, and afterward, conquered and defiled, could not be set free and purified.

But in human nature, which by sin flowed down into lower things, God so delights in peace that he does not abandon the balances of justice, nor does he wish the peace that he loves to be trampled by sinners, but to be loved by those who strive, laid hold of by victors; and he so promises these things, figured, to the carnal, that he shows them openly to the spiritual.

21. Concerning what is written in Deuteronomy: Cursed is everyone who has hung on a tree (Deut 21:23). Although this question has often been bandied about by the Manichees, I do not see, nevertheless, what contrary to this saying that has which Adimantus thought must be opposed from the Gospel, where the Lord says: If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you possess, and distribute to the poor, and take up your cross, and follow me (Matt 19:21; 16:24). Here, except that he names the cross, he attends to nothing contrary to that which was said, Cursed is everyone who has hung on a tree: as if indeed anyone could take up such a cross and follow the Lord. But that one is taken up when we follow the Lord, of which the Apostle says: But those who are of Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24). For by such a cross the old man—that is, the old life—is destroyed, which we have drawn from Adam, so that what in him was voluntary became in us natural. This the Apostle shows, saying: We too were once by nature sons of wrath, like the rest (Eph 2:3). If, then, the old life is from Adam, whence the old life is also signified by the name of the old man, what is there absurd in a curse being pronounced upon the old man, whom the Lord hung on the tree?

Because from that very succession he bore mortality, born mortally from the Virgin Mary, having flesh that was not sinful, but nevertheless bearing the likeness of the flesh of sin (See Rom 8:3); because he could die, and death is from sin. Whence is also that: Knowing that our old man was crucified together with him, so that the body of sin might be done away (Rom 6:6). It is not, then, the Lord, through the tongue of Moses the servant of God, but death itself that deserved the curse, which our Lord, by taking it up, did away. And so that death hung on the tree, which came to man through the woman by the persuasion of the serpent. Whence Moses too, for the signification of that very death, lifted up the serpent on a tree in the desert.

And since we are healed from the deadly desires through faith in the cross of the Lord, by which cross death was hung on the wood; therefore those who were poisoned by the bites of serpents, on beholding the serpent that was fixed and lifted up on the tree, were at once healed (See Num 21:9). To this sacred sign the Lord himself bore witness, saying: For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up (John 3:14). But by taking up the most ignominious kind of death among men—that is, the death of the cross—our Lord Jesus Christ commended to us his love, so that the Apostle rightly said, kindling us into love of him: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having been made a curse for us. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Gal 3:13). So that Christian liberty might dread not only no death, but not even any kind of death, as Jewish slavery did.

22. Concerning the man whom God commanded to be stoned, who was found gathering wood on the sabbath (See Num 15:35). The Lord, in the Gospel, when he healed the man's withered hand on the sabbath day (See Matt 12:10-13), did a divine work, not a human one; nor did he depart from rest, who commanded and it was done. And therefore this deed is not similar to that of the man gathering wood, who, when he was found doing it on the sabbath day, was, by the command of God, stoned.

But about the servile observance of the sabbath, and about the vengeance of temporal death, many things have already been said. For as goodness in the time of love, so the severity of God in the time of fear, is especially commended. And since, before the coming of the Lord, it was not yet fitting to lay bare to the people the sacred meanings of the lawful figures, those men were not invited to understand the things signified, but compelled to fulfill the commands: for they did not yet cleave to God through the spirit, but served the law through the flesh.

But I marvel that these people lament the man stoned at God's command, because, against the command of the Law, he gathered wood, and do not lament the tree dried up by the word of Christ (See Matt 21:18-20), which had acted against no precept; since they believe the soul of a tree to be such as that of a man.

23. Concerning what is written: Your wife is like a fruitful vine, and your sons like young olive plants around your table, and you will see your sons' sons; and you will know that in this way is blessed the man who fears the Lord (Ps 128:3-6 (127:3-6)). That this was said figuratively through the prophet, and pertains to the signification of the Church, the Manichees do not understand, and they think it contrary to what the Lord says in the Gospel about eunuchs who castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven (See Matt 19:12). But we have already discoursed, as much as was enough, about the husband, and the wife, and eunuchs, in the third section.

24. Concerning what is written in Solomon: Imitate the ant, and behold its diligence, for from the time of summer until winter it gathers food for itself (Prov 6:6-8). Neither do the Manichees understand that this is to be taken spiritually, and they think it is a precept that we should store up treasure on earth, or even take care for these barns, which men, without any precept, hasten greatly to fill.

And therefore Adimantus says that this from the Gospel is opposed to this saying, where the Lord says: Do not be anxious about tomorrow (Matt 6:34). But neither do they understand that this pertains to our not loving temporal things, nor fearing lest necessities fail us, nor, for the sake of acquiring them, serving either God or men.

For if this was said so that bread should not be kept for the morrow, the wandering Romans, whom they call Vagrants, fulfill this more—who, when their belly is sated with the daily ration, either at once give away what is left, or throw it out—than do even the Lord's disciples, who, even while walking on earth with the very Lord of heaven and earth, had money bags; or the apostle Paul, who, though a despiser of all earthly things, nevertheless so governed the things necessary for the present life that he even gave a precept about widows, saying: If any believer has widows, let him provide for them sufficiently, so that the Church may not be burdened, that it may be able to suffice for the true widows (1 Tim 5:16).

But still, that about the ant was set down in such a way that, just as it gathers in summer whence it may feed in winter, so each Christian, in the tranquility of affairs, which summer signifies, should gather the word of God, so that in adversity and tribulations, which are signified by the name of winter, he may have whence to live spiritually. For man does not live on bread alone, but on every word of God (See Deut 8:3; Matt 4:4). But if this disturbs them, that the ant stores in the earth what it gathers, let them be angry too at that treasure which the Lord says was found in a field (See Matt 13:44).

25. Concerning what is written in Hosea: Give them a barren womb and dry breasts: deaden the seed of their womb, that they may not bear (Hos 9:14). This prophetic utterance too is certainly figurative. For they understand a womb that is not fleshly in the Gospel, when they read: Rivers of living water will flow from his belly (John 7:38). And the Apostle had certain breasts, when he said: I gave you milk to drink, not solid food (1 Cor 3:2); and again: I became a little one in your midst, as if a nurse cherishing her children (1 Thess 2:7). And he is in labor again with the Galatians, who were turning aside to carnal things, until Christ be formed in them (See Gal 4:19). And therefore what Adimantus set down from the Gospel does not conflict with this prophetic saying—that in the resurrection from the dead, they will neither marry nor take wives, nor will they die, but are as the angels of God (Matt 22:30).

For this is surely what even eunuchs receive, of whom Isaiah speaks: A renowned place far better than sons and daughters; I will give them an eternal name, he says (Isa 56:5). Let these people, then, not suppose that such a reward is promised to the saints in the Gospel alone: and let them understand that the barren womb, and the dry breasts, and the deadened seed, that they may not bear, are said about those of whom the Apostle says: For just as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these too resist the truth, men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith: but they will not advance further; for their madness will be manifest to all, as theirs also was (2 Tim 3:8-9). When, then, they will advance no further, then they will have a barren womb, and dry breasts, and deadened seed. In which saying let these people deign to look at themselves as in a mirror.

26. Concerning what is written in the prophet Amos: If it can happen that two walking on the way do not recognize each other at all, and that a lion returns to its cub without prey; if a bird falls to the earth without a fowler, if they set a trap without cause, so as to catch nothing; if a trumpet gives a sound in the city, so that the people are not terrified: so too no evil is perpetrated in a city which the Lord will not do (Amos 3:3-6). Evil in this place must be understood not as sin, but as punishment. For evil is named in two ways: one that a man does, the other that he suffers: what he does is sin; what he suffers is punishment. The Prophet, then, was speaking of punishments when he said this. For, divine providence moderating and governing all things, a man so does the evil that he wills, that he suffers the evil that he does not will.

But these people accuse the Prophet, who says these things, as if they had not read in the Gospel: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them falls to the earth without the will of your Father? (Matt 10:29) Thus, then, God does the evil that is not evil to God himself, but to those upon whom he takes vengeance. And so he himself, as far as pertains to himself, does good; because everything just is good, and that vengeance is just.

And therefore it is not contrary, what Adimantus objects that the Lord said: A good tree makes good fruits; but a bad tree makes bad fruits (Matt 7:17). For although hell is an evil to the condemned, the justice of God is nevertheless good, and it is itself the fruit from a good tree. But that man, by the evils of his sins, stores up for himself wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will repay each one according to his works (See Rom 2:5-6). Although these two trees are most manifestly set down in the likeness of two men—that is, the just and the unjust: because unless someone changes his will, he cannot do good.

That this is placed within our power, he teaches in another place, where he says: Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad. For he says this to those who thought they could speak good things while they were bad—that is, make good fruits while they were bad trees. For he also adds: Hypocrites, how can you speak good things, when you are bad? (Matt 12:33-34) A bad tree, then, cannot make good fruits: but from being bad it can be made good, so that it may bear good fruits.

For you were once darkness, says the Apostle; but now you are light in the Lord. As if he were to say: You were once bad trees, and therefore you could then make only bad fruits: but now you are light in the Lord, that is, now also made good trees, give good fruits; which he goes on to say: Walk as sons of light: for the fruit of light is in all justice and truth; proving what is well-pleasing to the Lord (Eph 5:8-10).

For even in the Gospel passage itself, if Adimantus did not flee from it through zeal of malevolence, he could notice how God is said to do evil. For there the Lord says, what this man too recalled: Every tree that does not make good fruits will be cut down, and cast into the fire (Matt 7:19). These are the evils that God does—that is, punishments to sinners, that he will cast into the fire the trees that, persevering in malice, were unwilling to become good, while this is an evil to those trees. But God, as I have often said, does not give bad fruits, because the vengeance of sin is a fruit of justice.

27. Concerning what is written in the prophet Isaiah: I am the God who makes peace, and establishes evils (Isa 45:7). This too is resolved by the same rule. For Adimantus does not reproach what God said, I make peace; but what he said, I establish evils. Since the apostle Paul too treated these two things similarly, and even more fully, in one place, saying: You see, then, the goodness and the severity of God: toward those indeed who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you remain in goodness: otherwise you too will be cut off, and they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again (Rom 11:22-23).

In this apostolic discourse there sufficiently appears the goodness of God, according to which Isaiah said I am the God who makes peace; and the severity, according to which he said I establish evils. At the same time he also shows that it is within our power that we should deserve either to be grafted in by his goodness, or to be cut off by his severity. The Gospel, then, is not contrary to Isaiah, as Adimantus thinks, or rather desires it to be thought, where the Lord says: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God (Matt 5:9).

For even from this very side he ought to have recognized that Isaiah too knew the sons of God to be peacemakers, because through him God said: I am he who makes peace. But when he fixed his eye on one side, for understanding badly, on the other side he blinded himself.

But if another, similarly blind, wished to say that the Old Testament is good, where God says I do not will the death of the sinner, so much as that he should turn back and live (Ezek 33:11); but that the New Testament is evil, where Christ says Go into the eternal fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41): would he not, falling into a pit, drag down headlong with him all who followed him—the unlearned and ignorant of the Scriptures—into the blindness of unskillfulness, with his malice sprouting? But he who reads with a pious eye finds in the New Testament what these people accuse in the Old, and in the Old what they praise in the New.

28. 1. Concerning what is written in Isaiah: And it happened in the year in which King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a most high throne; and the house was full of his glory, and round about stood the Seraphim, having six wings each, and with two indeed they covered his face, but with two his feet (Isa 6:1-2). To this passage Adimantus opposes what the Apostle says: But to the invisible King of the ages, honor and praise forever (1 Tim 1:17).

In this question it must be asked what seemed good to him: either, in that vision of Isaiah, to pass over the two wings with which the Seraphim flew, saying Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; or, in the words of the Apostle, not to say the whole. For the Apostle says thus: But to the invisible, incorruptible King of the ages, to God alone, honor and glory forever and ever.

Or did he perhaps fear lest the mention of the Trinity should commend the Prophet to the reader, and he should suspect that something great lay hidden there? For it is said three times: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. But in the Apostle he perhaps saw that, if he had said to the incorruptible God, it would be answered him what we now say to these people: What, then, would the race of darkness have done to the incorruptible God, if he had been unwilling to fight with it? Or if he perhaps had read faulty manuscripts, or this one is faulty where we read Adimantus himself, the matter being doubtful must not be discoursed on any longer: but it must now be asked how both the Prophet said that he saw God on a most high throne, and the apostle Paul said truly that God is invisible.

And so I ask these people whether invisible things can be beheld. If they say they can, why, then, do they raise a calumny if the Prophet beheld the invisible God? But if they say they cannot, let them rather raise a calumny against the Apostle himself, if they dare, who says: For the invisible things of God, from the foundation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made (Rom 1:20). For he himself said they are invisible; and he himself again says, they are clearly seen. Are they not here compelled to confess that there are things invisible to the bodily eyes, but visible to the mind? So, then, the Prophet too saw God, who is corporeally invisible, not corporeally, but spiritually.

28. 2. For many kinds of vision are found in the holy Scriptures. One, according to the eyes of the body; as Abraham saw three men under the oak of Mamre (See Gen 18:1), and Moses fire in the bush (Exod 3:2), and the disciples the Lord transfigured on the mountain between Moses and Elijah (See Matt 17:2-3): and other things of this kind. Another, according to the spirit, by which we form images of the things we perceive through the body: for when this very part of ours is divinely taken up, many things are revealed, not through the eyes of the body, or the ears, or any other carnal sense, but nevertheless similar to these, as Peter saw that dish let down from heaven with various animals (See Acts 11:5-6). Of this kind is also that of Isaiah, which the impious most ignorantly reproach. For no bodily form circumscribes God: but just as many things are said figuratively, not properly, so too many things are shown figuratively. But the third kind of vision is according to the gaze of the mind, by which truth and wisdom are beheld, being understood: without which kind those two that I set down first are either fruitless, or even send one into error. For when those things which are divinely shown, whether to the bodily senses or to that part of the soul which receives the images of corporeal things, are not only perceived in these ways, but also understood by the mind, then the revelation is perfect. Of this third kind is that vision which I recalled, the Apostle saying: For the invisible things of God, from the foundation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made (Rom 1:20).

By this vision God is seen, when, through the piety of faith and through the knowledge of God, hearts are cleansed of the best morals. For what did it profit King Belshazzar that he beheld the hand writing on the wall before his eyes? To which vision, because he could not join the gaze of the mind, he still sought to see what he had seen. But Daniel, endowed with such sharpness of light, by which these things are understood, saw with his mind what that man had seen with his body (See Dan 5).

Again, by that part of the mind which receives the images of bodies, King Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream: and since he did not have a fit eye of the mind for seeing better what he had seen—that is, for understanding what he had seen—therefore, for interpreting his vision, he sought another's gaze, namely that of the same Daniel: to whom, nevertheless, in order to lend sure faith as he disclosed it, he demanded that the dream itself be told to him. But Daniel, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit of God, both saw what that man had seen in his dreams, by that part by which the images of bodies are received, and beheld with his mind what it signified (See Dan 2).

But he is not a prophet of the true and highest God who sees the visions divinely offered either with the body alone, or even with that part of the spirit by which the images of bodies are received, and does not see with his mind. But for the most part in the Scriptures things are found set down as they were seen, not also as they were understood; so that the vision of the mind, in which is the whole fruit, might be reserved for exercising the readers.

But from the many things that are plainly written, it is made manifest to us how they understood those things which they set down in their books in the way they were figuratively shown to them. For figurative demonstrations pertain to those two kinds of vision: but to the vision of the mind—that is, of the understanding—pertains the simple and proper revelation of things understood and certain. Yet all these kinds the Holy Spirit of the highest and unchangeable wisdom presents and moderates by marvelous and ineffable distributions. But these are wretched people who raise a calumny against the Prophet, who says that he saw God, objecting the apostolic saying where he called him invisible.

For if another should object to this apostolic word the evangelical word, by which the Lord says Blessed are the pure in heart, for they themselves will see God (Matt 5:8), how will they answer that the invisible can be seen? For they press the unskilled with a word, and, in what sense God is called invisible, even if they know, they fear to know. So great is the ruin of minds which, when they wish to conquer a man, are conquered by error.