1. There was a certain Faustus, an African by birth, a citizen of Milevis, pleasant in speech, clever in mind, a Manichean by sect, and on that account perverted by an unspeakable error. I knew the man myself, as I have recalled in the books of my Confessions. He published a certain volume against the right Christian faith and the Catholic truth. When it came into our hands and had been read by the brethren, they desired, and by the right of love through which we serve them they demanded, that we reply to it. This I shall now undertake, in the name and with the help of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so that all who read these things may understand how worthless a sharp mind and a polished tongue are unless the steps of a man be directed by the Lord (See Ps 37:23 (36:23)). This has been granted, by the hidden justice of divine mercy, even to many who are slower and weaker, while many who were most keen and most eloquent, abandoned by the help of God, ran swiftly and stubbornly to this end—that they might stray farther from the way of truth.

I think it fitting, moreover, to set his words under his name, and my reply under mine.

2. Faustus said: Now that errors have been more than sufficiently dragged into the light, and the deceit both of Jewish superstition and of the half-Christians has been amply exposed—by that most learned man, the only one besides our blessed father Mani worthy of our study, Adimantus—it has seemed not amiss, dearest brethren, to write for you these brief and well-ordered replies as well, on account of the crafty and cunning propositions of those who debate with us, so that when these same men, after the manner of their parent the serpent, try to entrap you with captious little questions, you too may be vigilantly equipped to answer them. For thus it will come about that, bound to the very things they have proposed, they will not be able to wander any further this way and that. And lest the minds of readers be flooded with diffuse or confused discourse, I have set their words and ours opposite each other, as briefly as distinctly.

3. Augustine replied: You think half-Christians are to be guarded against, which is what you say we are; but we guard against pseudo-Christians, which is what we show you to be. For what is half is in some part incomplete, yet in no part false. What then? If something is lacking to the faith of those whom you try to entrap, is what they have on that account to be destroyed, rather than what they lack to be built up? So, speaking to certain incomplete people, the Apostle says: rejoicing and seeing your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ (Col 2:5). He certainly discerned a kind of spiritual structure, as he says elsewhere: you are God's building (1 Cor 3:9); and in it he discerned both what made him rejoice and what made him concerned. He rejoiced over what he already saw built up; he was concerned over what he perceived still had to be built, up to the summit of perfection. And so it is us—truly Catholics, not yet perfect, but in a way, as you said, half-Christians—whom you assail to deceive and seduce by your perversity.

But if there are still any such people, once they understand that you are pseudo-Christians, then even though, because of what is lacking to their faith, they cannot answer the captious propositions of your questions, they nonetheless recognize that you are to be avoided, not followed. Therefore, just as your aim is to seek out half-Christians whom you may deceive, so our aim is to show you to be pseudo-Christians—so that not only do the more skilled Christians expose you by refuting you, but the less skilled also profit by guarding against you.

But why did you call the serpent our parent? Or has it slipped your mind how you are accustomed to blame the God who gave the commandment to man in paradise (See Gen 2:16-17), and to praise the serpent because by its counsel it opened his eyes (See Gen 3:7)? I think it just that you should rather acknowledge as your own parent that serpent, the devil, whom you praise. For he, even now blamed by you, acknowledges you as his son.

1. Faustus said: Do you accept the Gospel?

Indeed, above all.

Then accordingly do you also accept that Christ was born?

It is not so. For it does not follow that, if I accept the Gospel, I therefore also accept that Christ was born.

Why?

Because the Gospel began both to exist and to be named from the preaching of Christ, in which, however, he nowhere says that he was born of men. But the genealogy is so far from being the Gospel that not even its writer dared to call it the Gospel. For what did he write? The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David (Matt 1:1). Not, then, the book of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but the book of the generation—indeed, where a star too is introduced that confirms a horoscope (See Matt 2:2), so that this might more rightly be called a "little Genesis" than a Gospel. And then Mark, who did not trouble to write a generation but only the preaching of the Son of God, which is the Gospel—see how fittingly he began: The Gospel, he says, of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1). So that from this it appears more than abundantly that the genealogy is not the Gospel. For in Matthew himself, after John had been shut up in prison, then it is read that Jesus began to preach the Gospel of the kingdom (Matt 4:12, 17). Therefore whatever was narrated before this is established to be genealogy, not Gospel. Otherwise, what was to stop Matthew too from putting "the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God"—unless he thought it dishonest to call a genealogy the Gospel?

Therefore, if it is now sufficiently clear to you, what until now you did not know, that the Gospel is something far other than the genealogy, then know that I accept, as I said, the Gospel—that is, the preaching of Christ. About this, whatever you wish to question further, ask, leaving aside the generations. Or if you have a mind to confer about these too, I do not in fact refuse, since I have great abundance for answering about them as well; but you, learn to ask what comes first. For you seem to me now to want to know, not whether I accept the Gospel, but whether I accept the generations.

2. Augustine replied: You certainly questioned yourself, as though in our person, whether you accepted the Gospel; and you answered: Above all. And again you asked whether you accepted that Christ was born; and you answered: It is not so—adding this reason, namely, that the generation of Christ does not pertain to the Gospel. What then will you answer to the Apostle when he says: Remember that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel (2 Tim 2:8)? You certainly see how you do not know, or pretend not to know, what the Gospel is; and you name the Gospel not from apostolic teaching but from your own error. But if you call "Gospel" what the Apostles called Gospel, you stray from the Gospel, since you do not believe that Christ is of the seed of David—which the Apostle testified is preached according to his Gospel. And what was the Gospel of the apostle Paul was also that of the other Apostles and of all the faithful stewards of so great a mystery. For he says elsewhere: Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed (1 Cor 15:11). For not all of them wrote a Gospel, yet all of them preached the Gospel. Indeed, those who recounted the origin, the deeds, the words, and the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ were properly called Evangelists. For if we ask what the very name means when rendered in Latin: Gospel means "good tidings" or "good announcement." And although this can always be said whenever something good is announced, the word has nonetheless properly come to be used for that announcement of the Savior of which I spoke. But if you announce something else, it is plain that you are outside the Gospel.

Surely the little ones whom you call half-Christians are set against you, if they hear the voice of mother love sounding for them from the apostolic mouth: If anyone announces to you anything other than what we announced to you, let him be accursed (Gal 1:8-9). Since, then, Paul himself announced according to his Gospel that Christ is of the seed of David, you who deny this and announce something else, may you be accursed. And who does not see with how great a blindness it is said that Christ nowhere says he was born of men, when he almost never keeps silent about his being the Son of man?

3. But evidently, most learned men, you bring out to us from your storehouse some first man or other, who descended from the race of light to do battle against the race of darkness, armed with his own waters against the enemy's waters, and with his own fire against the enemy's fire, and with his own winds against the enemy's winds. Why, then, not also with his own smoke against the enemy's smoke, and with his own darkness against the enemy's darkness? Instead, against the smoke he was armed, as you say, with air, and against the darkness with light. Or is it because smoke and darkness are evil that his goodness could not have them? Then those three—water, wind, fire—are good. Why, then, could the malice of the opposing race have them? Here you answer: But that water of the race of darkness was evil, whereas the water the first man brought was good; and that one's wind was evil, but this one's good; and so this one's fire too, being good, fought against that one's evil fire. Why, then, could he not also bring good smoke against evil smoke? Or do your lies, like the smoke itself, vanish and fail in the smoke?

Surely your first man waged war against a contrary nature. Why, against those five elements which you invent in the contrary race, was one contrary thing brought from the divine realms—light against darkness? For the other four are not contraries. For air is not contrary to smoke, much less is water to water, wind to wind, and fire to fire.

4. And now, who could listen to those sacrilegious ravings of yours, that your first man, in accordance with the will of the enemy, in order to capture them, changed and turned the elements he carried, so that the realm which you call the realm of falsehood, remaining in its own nature, did not fight deceitfully, while the substance of truth appeared mutable, in order to deceive? You want our Lord Jesus Christ to be believed the son of this first man. You call truth the daughter of this fabricated tale. This first man whom you praise, because he fought against the opposing race with mutable and lying forms—if you tell the truth, you do not imitate him; but if you do imitate him, then you too are lying. Therefore our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the true and truthful Son of God, the true and truthful son of man—both of which he himself testifies concerning himself—drew from true God the eternity of his divinity, and from true man the origin of his flesh.

Apostolic teaching knows nothing of your first man. Hear the apostle Paul: The first man, he says, was of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of him who is from heaven (1 Cor 15:47-49). So the first man, of the earth, earthy, is that Adam formed from the mud; but the second man, from heaven, heavenly, is the Lord Jesus Christ, because the Son of God came to the flesh, by assuming which he might both become man outwardly and remain God inwardly—so that he might both be the true Son of God through whom we were made, and become the true son of man through whom we were remade.

Why, then, do you bring forth your fabricated first man from who knows where, and refuse to acknowledge the first man whom apostolic teaching teaches? Or is it that there may be fulfilled in you what the Apostle himself says: turning away their hearing from the truth, but turning aside to fables (2 Tim 4:4)? Paul announces a first man of the earth, earthy; Mani announces a first man not earthy, clothed in who knows what deceptive five elements. And Paul says: If anyone announces to you anything other than what we announced to you, let him be accursed (Gal 1:8-9). Therefore, lest Paul be a liar, let Mani be accursed.

5.1. But that you also slander the star by which the Magi were led to adore the infant Christ—you are not ashamed of this, although you place your own fabricated Christ, the son of your fabricated first man, not under the testimony of a star, but say that he is bound up in all the stars; because, you believe, he was mingled with the princes of darkness in that war in which your first man fought with the race of darkness, so that from those very princes of darkness, captured by such a mingling, the world might be fashioned. Hence these sacrilegious ravings compel you to say that Christ is fixed and bound and concreted not only in heaven and in all the stars, but also in the earth and in all things that are born from it—no longer your Savior, but one to be saved by you when you eat him and belch him up. 5.2. For deceived by this impious vanity, you also deceive your Hearers into bringing you food, so that the Christ bound in it may be helped through your teeth and bellies. For you preach that by such aid he is loosed and freed; and not even the whole of him, but you maintain that even still some scanty and filthy remnants of him remain in excrement, so that they are held entangled and implicated again and again in various corporeal forms; and that if, while the world stands, they cannot be loosed and purified, then by that final fire with which the world itself will burn (See 2 Pet 3:10-12) they may be loosed and purified. And yet not even then, you say, can the whole Christ be freed, but the very last and remaining particles of his good and divine nature, which are so defiled that they can in no way be washed clean, are condemned forever, fixed to the dreadful clod of darkness.

See those who feign indignation that injury is done to the Son of God, because a star is said to have shown him as born, as though his birth were set under a fateful constellation—while they themselves set him not only under the conjunction of the stars, but in the bonds of all earthly things, and in the saps of all herbs, and in the rottenness of all flesh, and in the corruption of all foods, so bound and polluted that, in great part though not in whole, he cannot be loosed and purified unless he is belched up even from leeks and little roots, and that by men—namely, the Elect of the Manicheans.

5.3. We, for our part, place the horoscope of no man under the fate of the stars, so that, on account of the just judgment of God, we may vindicate from every bond of necessity the free choice of the will, by which one lives either well or badly. How much less, then, do we believe that the temporal generation of him who is the eternal Creator and Lord of all things was made under the condition of the stars? And so that star which the Magi saw, when Christ was born according to the flesh, did not rule over him by decree, but served as a testimony; it did not subject him to its command, but pointed him out in homage. Accordingly this star was not one of those which from the beginning of creation keep the order of their courses under the Creator's law; but by the new birth from a Virgin a new star appeared, which performed the ministry of its office even to the Magi themselves as they sought Christ, when it went before their face, until by going ahead it led them all the way to the very place where the Word of God was an infant. What astrologers, after all, have so set the fates of men being born under the stars as to assert that some star, when some man was born, left the order of its circuit and went over to him who was born? For they suppose that the lot of one being born is bound to the order of the stars, not that the order of the stars can be changed on account of the day of a man's birth.

Therefore, if that star was one of those which run their courses in the heavens, how could it decree what the newborn Christ was going to do, when at Christ's birth it was ordered to leave what it was doing? But if, as is more probably believed, it arose to point out Christ, and did not exist before, then Christ was not born because it appeared, but rather it appeared because Christ was born. Hence, if it had to be put so, we would say that the star was not the fate of Christ, but Christ the fate of the star. For he gave to it, not it to him, the cause of arising.

If, then, there are fates, which are named from fari, that is, from speaking—since Christ is the Word of God, in whom all things were spoken before they existed—then the company of the stars is not the fate of Christ, but Christ is the fate even of the stars: he who assumed the very flesh created under heaven by that will with which he also created heaven, and laid it down and took it up again by that power with which he also commanded the stars.

6. Why, then, should what is narrated about this generation not be the Gospel, since something so good is announced to us by it, that through it our infirmity is healed? Is it because Matthew did not begin by saying, The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:1), as Mark says, but, The book of the generation of Jesus Christ (Matt 1:1)? In this way, neither would John be said to have written a Gospel, since he too does not say "The beginning of the Gospel," or "The book of the Gospel," but, In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). Unless perhaps Faustus was so elegant a fabricator of words that he would name this beginning of John's too a "little Word-book," on account of the Word, just as he dared to call the other a "little Genesis," on account of the horoscope. But why do you not rather consider with what impudence you call those long and impious fables of yours the Gospel? For what good is announced there, where it is said that God could not otherwise provide for and look after his kingdom against some rebellious, contrary, and alien nature, except by sending part of his own nature into its greedy jaws to be devoured, and so polluted that, after such labors and torments, it could not even be wholly purified? Is then so bad a tiding the Gospel? Surely all who know Greek even slightly translate "Gospel" as "good tidings" or "good announcement." But how is this a good tiding, when God himself is announced to you as mourning behind a veil set before him, until his members are restored and purified from that devastation and contamination? And if he should ever end his mourning, he will be cruel. For what evil did that part of him deserve from him, which will be bound in the clod—which surely must be mourned forever, since it will be condemned forever? But we have escaped: for whoever attends carefully to this tiding is not compelled to mourn that it is bad, but to laugh that it is false.

1. Faustus said: Do you then accept the generation?

For my part I long tried to persuade myself of this very thing, such as it is—that God was born; but, offended above all by the disagreement of the two evangelists who write his genealogy, Luke and Matthew (See Matt 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38), I hesitated, uncertain which of them I should rather follow. For I thought it might be that, since I am not prescient, the one I supposed to be lying might himself be speaking the truth, and the one I supposed to be speaking the truth might himself perhaps be lying. So, leaving aside their endless quarrel, interminable for me, I betook myself to John and Mark—not unequally, from two to two, and from Evangelists to professors of the same name. Their beginnings pleased me for the time, and not without reason, because they introduce neither David nor Mary nor Joseph; but John indeed says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (See John 1:1), meaning Christ; while Mark says: The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1)—as though reproaching Matthew, who put "the son of David." Unless perhaps the one announces one Jesus, and the other another. This, then, is the reason why I do not accept that Christ was born. But you, if you are great enough to take away this offense from me, bring it about that they agree among themselves; and somehow I will yield—although not even so will it be worthy to believe that God was born from a womb, and the God of Christians at that.

2. Augustine replied: Oh, if only you had read the Gospel with pious zeal, and had preferred to seek out diligently the things in the Evangelists that struck you as contradictory, rather than rashly to condemn them—so that at least, on account of that most evident contradiction which meets one as if at first glance, you might consider that, unless something great lay hidden there, it could hardly have come about that such great authority was granted them throughout the world, by which they subjected to themselves the minds of so many most learned men.

For what is so great about seeing what you have seen—that some of Christ's forebears according to the flesh are recorded by Luke, others by Matthew—when both set down Joseph, Matthew as the one at whom he ends, Luke as the one from whom he begins; who, on account of a certain holy and virginal marriage with his mother, himself also deserved to be called the parent of Christ, so that, on account of the dignity of the husband, the generations might be woven from him, or up to him? What, then, is so great about what you have seen—that Joseph has one father according to Matthew, another according to Luke; and one grandfather according to the one, another according to the other, and thereafter on upward all the way to David, through so many generations, other forebears of his counted by the one, others by the other?

Would so many keen and learned men, most diligent treaters of the divine Scriptures, not have seen so open and manifest a difference? Of these there are very few in the Latin tongue; but who could count those in the Greek? They saw it plainly. For what is easier, or who, looking even a little, does not see these things? But, thinking piously of the eminence of so great an authority, they believed that something lay hidden there which would be given to those who asked, denied to those who railed; found by those who sought, withdrawn from those who reproached; opened to those who knocked (See Matt 7:7), closed to those who assailed; they asked, they sought, they knocked, they received, they found, they entered.

3. The whole question lies in this: how Joseph could have had two fathers. For if it is shown that this could have happened, there is no cause at all why any of these Evangelists should be believed to have spoken falsely in counting the generations differently. For from two fathers it will no longer be strange or contradictory that there could also be two grandfathers, two great-great-grandfathers, two great-grandfathers, and whatever is above, up to David, whose sons both were—both Solomon, who belongs to the order Matthew followed, and Nathan, who is in the series Luke set out. For some attend to these things and see that a man cannot be begotten by two men through the mingling of flesh; and therefore they think this question cannot be resolved. But they do not consider what is most usual and most easy—that a person's father is called not only the one by whom he was begotten, but also the one by whom he was adopted.

For the bond of adoption was not alien to the customs of the ancients, since we find even women adopting sons for themselves who were not born from their own womb: as Sarah adopted from Hagar (See Gen 16:1), and Leah from her maidservant (See Gen 30:9ff), and Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses (See Exod 2:9ff). And Jacob himself adopted his grandsons, the sons of Joseph (See Gen 48:5). And that the very word "adoption" has the greatest force in the mystery of our faith, apostolic teaching testifies. Hence the apostle Paul, when he was speaking of the merits of the Jews, says: Theirs is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law; theirs are the fathers, and from them is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom 9:4-5). Likewise he says: And we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). Likewise in another place: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal 4:4-5). How great a mystery this adoption is, then, appears sufficiently from these and similar testimonies.

For God has one only Son, whom he begot of his own substance, of whom it is said: Though he was in the form of God, he did not count it robbery to be equal to God (Phil 2:6). But us he did not beget of his own substance; for we are a creation, which he did not beget but made; and therefore, that he might make us brothers of Christ after his own manner, he adopted us. This manner, then, by which God—when we already existed, not born of him but founded and established—begot us by his Word and his grace, that we might be his sons, is called adoption. Hence John says: He gave them power to become the sons of God (John 1:12).

Since, then, the right of adopting sons was in use among our fathers and in the holy Scriptures, what madness of impiety hurls one headlong to charge the Evangelists with falsehood, because they recorded different generations—as though both could not be true—rather than to consider and attend to and see what is most easy: by how frequent a custom of the human race one man could have had two fathers, one by whose flesh the man was begotten, the other by whose will he was adopted as a son when he was already a man? And if such a one is not rightly called father, then neither do we rightly say, Our Father, who art in heaven (Matt 6:9), to him of whose substance we were not born, but by whose grace and most merciful will we were adopted, according to apostolic teaching and the most faithful truth. For we have him as both God, and Lord, and Father: God, because by him we were founded, even from human parents; Lord, because we are subject to him; Father, because by his adoption we have been reborn.

3. It was easy, then, for religious searchers of the divine writings to consider a little, and to see, in the different generations of Christ recorded by the two evangelists, how Joseph could have had two fathers, whose forebears are counted differently. You too could easily see this, if the zeal of contention did not blind you. But other things as well were sought out and found by those men, as they handled all the parts of these narratives; whereas these things are very far removed from your understanding. And so, even though you are established in the error of Mani, you could see by reflection—if you did not read with a hostile mind—what is wont to happen in human affairs: that one man begets a son by flesh, another adopts him by will, and thus one man has two fathers.

4. But why Matthew began from Abraham, descending all the way to Joseph, while Luke began from Joseph, ascending, not to Abraham, but to God who made man and, having given a commandment, gave him the power, by believing, to become a son of God; and why the former counted the generations at the head of his book, while the latter did so after the Lord Savior had been baptized by John; and what the number of the generations according to Matthew means, that they are arranged in three sets of fourteen, which, when reckoned in a sum, seem to come to one less; while the number of the generations according to Luke, recorded at the Lord's baptism, reaches seventy-seven—a number which the Lord himself commends in the forgiveness of sins, saying: Not only seven times, but until seventy times seven (Matt 18:22): all this you could in no way trace out, unless either you heard it from some Catholic—not just anyone, but one zealous for the divine Scriptures and as skilled as he could be—or, corrected yourselves from error, you asked with Catholic piety, that you might receive; sought, that you might find; knocked, that you might enter.

5. Therefore, since the thing that so disturbed Faustus about the difference of the generations—because the knot here lay in understanding the two fathers—is undone once nature and adoption are understood, he wished in vain to betake himself to the two Evangelists and to withdraw from the other two: more likely to stumble against those to whom he betook himself than to take anything from those from whom he withdrew. For the saints do not love those who choose them, if they find them deserters of their associates.

For they rejoice in unity, and in Christ they are one; and though one says one thing and another another, or one says it in one way and another in another, yet all say true things, in no way contrary to one another, if a pious reader approaches, if he reads gently, if he searches not with a heretical mind, for something to quarrel over, but with a faithful heart, for something to be built up by.

Now then, since we have believed that the individual Evangelists undertook to narrate the generations of the individual fathers—it being not alien to the human race for one man to have two—our faith is not alien to the truth. Therefore, since the Evangelists now agree among themselves, as Faustus promised, yield somehow.

6. Or does that which he added still disturb you? "Although not even so," he says, "will it be worthy to believe that God was born from a womb, and the God of Christians at that." As though we believed that the divine nature itself came forth from a woman's womb. Did I not just now recall the testimony of the Apostle, where he says of the Jews: Theirs are the fathers, and from them is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom 9:5)? Christ, then, our Lord and Savior, the true Son of God according to divinity, and the true son of man according to the flesh, was not born of a woman in respect of that by which he is God over all things, blessed forever; but in respect of that infirmity which he assumed from us, that in it he might die for us and heal it in us. Not from the form of God, in which, when he was, he did not count it robbery to be equal to God, was he born of a woman; but from the form of a servant, by taking which he emptied himself (Phil 2:6-7). For he is said to have emptied himself for no other reason than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God. For while that nature, by which in the form of God he is equal to the Father, remained unchangeably, he assumed our changeable nature, through which he might be born of a virgin. But you, while you shudder to commit Christ's flesh to a virginal womb, have committed the very divinity of God to the wombs not only of men, but even of dogs and pigs! You refuse to believe that Christ's flesh was conceived once in the womb of a virgin, in which God was not only not bound, but not even changed; and yet you preach that God's very part and divine nature is bound, oppressed, and defiled in the male seeds and female wombs of all men and beasts, in all conceptions, throughout all lands, and through all waters, and through all hours, and cannot even afterward be wholly freed!

1. Faustus said: Do you accept the Old Testament?

If there is an inheritance for me in it, I accept it; if there is not, I do not accept it. For it is indeed an excessive shamelessness to lay claim to a will that testifies one disinherited. Or do you not know that the Old Testament promises the land of the Canaanites (See Gen 15:18; 17:8)—but to the Jews, that is, to the circumcised, and those who sacrifice, and abstain from pork and the other flesh that Moses calls unclean, who observe sabbaths and the solemnity of unleavened bread, and the rest of this kind, which its very testator commanded them to observe (See Lev 11:7; Exod 12; 20:8)? Since these things have pleased no Christian—for none of us keeps them—it is fitting that, having renounced the inheritance, we should also hand back the will. This, then, is the first reason why I think the Old Testament must be cast off, unless you teach me something more prudent. But the second reason is that its inheritance is so wretched and so corporeal and so far from the soul's benefits that, after that blessed promise of the New Testament, which promises me the kingdom of heaven and perpetual life, I would loathe it even if its testator forced it on me for free.

2.1. Augustine replied: That promises of temporal things are contained in the Old Testament, and that it is therefore called the Old Testament, none of us doubts; and that the promise of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven pertains to the New Testament. But that in those temporal things there were figures of things to come, which would be fulfilled in us, upon whom the end of the ages has come, is not my surmise but the apostolic understanding, since Paul, when he was speaking of such things, says: All these things were figures of us; and again: All these things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:6, 11).

We accept the Old Testament, then, not for obtaining those promises, but for understanding in them the foretellings of the New Testament; for the witness of the Old wins faith for the New. Hence the Lord, after he had risen from the dead and offered himself not only to be seen by the eyes of his disciples but also to be touched by their hands, lest they should think anything was being done deceptively through their mortal and carnal senses, strengthened them all the more from the testimony of the old books, saying: It was necessary that all things be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms concerning me (Luke 24:44).

And so our hope is not fixed on the promise of temporal things; for we do not believe that even the holy and spiritual men of that time, the Patriarchs and Prophets, were devoted to these earthly things. For they understood, the Spirit of God revealing it to them, what suited that time, and in what ways God, through all those things done and said, was determining to figure and foretell things to come; and their desire was rather for the New Testament. But the present corporeal function was supplied to the old promises in order to signify the new things to come. Thus the tongue of those men was not the only thing prophetic, but their life as well. The carnal people, however, clung to the promises of the present life. Yet even by that people, no less, things to come were signified.

2.2. But you do not understand these things; because, as the prophet said: Unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa 7:9). For you are not learned in the kingdom of heaven, that is, in the true Catholic Church of Christ. If you were, you would bring forth from the riches of the holy Scriptures not only new things but old as well. For the Lord himself says: Therefore every scribe learned in the kingdom of heaven is like a man, a householder, who brings forth from his treasure new things and old (Matt 13:52). And so, while you suppose that you hold only the new promises of God, you have remained in the oldness of the flesh and brought in the newness of error. Of this newness the Apostle says: Avoid profane novelties of words; for they contribute much to impiety, and their speech spreads like a cancer. Of these are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and have subverted the faith of some (2 Tim 2:16-18).

Recognize that you flow from this vein of falsehood, you who say that there is now only a resurrection of souls through the preaching of truth, while you deny that the resurrection of bodies, which the Apostles preached, is to come. And what can you think spiritually, according to the inner man who is renewed in the knowledge of God (See Col 3:10), when, through the oldness of the flesh and through the images of carnal things in which your whole error is wrapped, you do not hold corporeal things by possession, but savor them by phantasm? For you boast that you despise and loathe the land of the Canaanites, which was manifest and was manifestly given to that people; as though you did not describe the land of light as split off on one side from the land of the race of darkness, as though by a wedge driven in, so that it is neither found in the truth of things and is believed in the falsehood of your imaginings—and so neither sustains your life by being given, nor corrupts your mind by being desired.

1. Faustus said: Do you accept the Gospel?

You ask me whether I accept it, when the very acceptance of it is plain, because I observe what it commands. Or ought I to ask of you whether you accept it, in whom no signs of one accepting the Gospel appear? I left father and mother, wife, children, and the rest, as the Gospel commands (See Matt 19:29); and do you ask whether I accept the Gospel? Unless you still do not know what it is that is called the Gospel. For it is nothing other than the preaching and commandment of Christ. I rejected silver and gold, and ceased to keep copper in my belts, content with daily food, taking no care for the morrow, bearing no anxiety about where the belly might be filled or the body covered (See Matt 10:9-10; 6:25-34); and do you ask of me whether I accept the Gospel? You see in me those beatitudes of Christ that make up the Gospel (See Matt 5:3-11); and do you ask whether I accept it? You see a poor man, you see a meek man, you see a peacemaker, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, enduring persecutions and hatreds for the sake of righteousness; and do you doubt whether I accept the Gospel? It is then no longer surprising that John the Baptist, having seen Jesus and likewise heard of his works, still asked whether he was the Christ—to whom rightly and deservedly Jesus did not even deign to report that he himself was, but again sent back to him those same works which he had long since heard of: The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead rise (Matt 11:2-5). This I too might not undeservedly do regarding you, if to your repeated question whether I accept the Gospel I were to say: I have left all that is mine—father, mother, wife, children, gold, silver, eating, drinking, delights, pleasures. Consider this a sufficient answer to your questions, and consider that you will be blessed if you are not scandalized in me.

2. But to accept the Gospel, you say, is not this alone—to do what it has commanded—but also to believe all the things written in it, the first of which is that Jesus was born. But neither is this alone to accept the Gospel—to believe that Jesus was born—but also to do what it has commanded. Now if you think I do not accept the Gospel because I pass over the generation, then neither do you accept it; and much more do you not accept it, because you despise the precepts. And by this, for the time, we are equal, until we examine the parts as well. Or if that contempt of the precepts does not prejudge against you, so as to keep you from professing that you accept the Gospel, why should a condemned genealogy prejudge against me to that effect? But if to accept the Gospel consists in these two things, as you say—to believe the genealogies and to keep the commandments—why, then, do you, imperfect, judge the imperfect? Each of us needs the other.

But if, what is more certain, to accept the Gospel consists in the observance alone of the heavenly commandments, then you are doubly base, since, as the saying goes, you, a deserter, accuse a soldier. And yet come, let us grant, since you so wish, that there are these two parts of perfect faith—one of which consists in word, that is, to confess that Christ was born; the other in deed, which is the observance of the precepts. See, then, how arduous and more difficult a part I have chosen for myself; and you, see how very light and easy a part you have.

And not without reason does the crowd flock to you and flee from me, not knowing, of course, that the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. What, then, is the reason you challenge me, if, having undertaken the more difficult part of faith, I left the easier to you as the weaker one? But I, you say, think this part of faith—which you abandoned, namely, to confess that Christ was born—more effective for granting salvation to souls, and more suitable.

3. Come, then, let us ask Christ himself, and let us learn from his own mouth from which source above all the occasion of our salvation arises. Which of men will enter into your kingdom, Christ? He who does, he says, the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matt 7:21). He did not say: He who has professed me to have been born. And elsewhere to the disciples: Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep all things whatsoever I have commanded you (Matt 28:19-20). He did not say: Teaching them that I was born, but to keep the commandments.

Likewise elsewhere: You will be my friends, if you do what I command you (John 15:14). He did not say: If you believe me to have been born. Again: If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love (John 15:10).

And many other things. Moreover, on the mountain too, when he was teaching: Blessed are the poor in spirit, he said, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are they who mourn, blessed are they who hunger, blessed are they who suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness (Matt 5:3-10); nowhere did he say: Blessed are they who have confessed me to have been born.

And in the separation of the sheep from the goats at the judgment, he says he will say to those who will be on the right: I was hungry, and you fed me; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, and the rest: therefore receive the kingdom (Matt 25:34-35). He did not say: Because you believed me to have been born, receive the kingdom. Moreover, to the rich man seeking eternal life: Go, he says, sell all that you have, and follow me (Matt 19:21). He did not say: Believe me to have been born, that you may live forever.

Behold, then, to my portion, which I chose for myself out of the twofold faith, as you would have it, everywhere the kingdom, life, and blessedness are promised; but to yours, nowhere. Either teach where it is written that he is blessed, or will receive the kingdom, or will have eternal life, who has confessed him to have been born of a woman. Meanwhile, even though this too is a part of faith, it has no blessedness.

But when we have proved that it is not even a part of faith, what then? Surely you will be empty—which itself, of course, will be shown. But for the present this is enough for our purpose: that this portion of ours is crowned with the beatitudes. To it, however, there is added that other blessedness as well, from the confession of word also, in that we confess Jesus to be Christ the Son of the living God—which Jesus likewise testifies with his own mouth, saying to Peter: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven (Matt 16:17). Therefore we hold, not, as you supposed, one, but two parts of faith, both equally valid; and in both alike we are called blessed by Christ, since we exercise one of them by works and preach the other without blasphemy.

4. Augustine replied: I have already recalled above how often the Lord Jesus Christ calls himself the son of man, and with how great vanity the Manicheans bring in the fable of their unspeakable error, about some fabricated first man or other, whom they preach to be not earthy, but clothed in deceptive elements, against the Apostle who says: The first man was of the earth, earthy (1 Cor 15:47); and with how great care the same Apostle warned us, saying: If anyone announces to you anything other than what we announced to you, let him be accursed (Gal 1:8-9). It remains, therefore, that we believe Christ the son of man as he is preached by apostolic truth, not as he is fabricated by the falsehood of the Manicheans.

Since, then, the Evangelists announce him born of a woman, of the house of David, that is, of the family of David, and Paul writes to Timothy, saying: Remember that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel (2 Tim 2:8), it appears clearly enough how we ought to believe Christ to be the son of man—he who, being the Son of God through whom we were made, was also made the son of man through the assumption of flesh, that he might die for our sins and rise for our justification (See Rom 4:25). And therefore he calls himself both, the Son of God and the son of man. Hence, not to go through many passages, in one place in the Gospel according to John it is written thus: Amen, amen I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and they who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself; and he gave him power to do judgment, because he is the son of man (John 5:25-27). He said: They will hear the voice of the Son of God; and he said: Because he is the son of man. For in respect of his being the son of man he received power to do judgment, since he will come to the judgment in that very form, so that he may be seen both by the good and by the wicked. In which form he also ascended into heaven, and that voice sounded to the disciples: So he will come, as you saw him going into heaven (Acts 1:11). For in respect of his being the Son of God, he is God equal to the Father, and one with the Father, and will not be seen by the wicked: For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8).

Since, then, he promises eternal life to those who believe in him, and to believe in him is nothing other than to believe in the true Christ, such as he himself preaches and is preached by the Apostles—that is, both the true Son of God and the true son of man—you, Manicheans, who believe in a false and deceptive Christ, the son of a false and deceptive man, since you teach that God himself, terrified by the tumult of the opposing race, sent his members to be tormented and not afterward to be wholly purified,

you see how alien you are from the eternal life which Christ promises to those who believe in him. But, you say, he said to Peter, who confessed him the Son of God: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona (Matt 16:17). Does he therefore promise nothing to those who would believe in him as the son of man, when he himself is both the Son of God and the son of man? You have eternal life plainly promised to those who believe in the son of man as well. As Moses, he says, lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:14-15). What more do you want? Believe, then, in the son of man, that you may have eternal life; for he himself is also the Son of God, who can give eternal life; for he himself is the true God and eternal life (1 John 5:20), as the same John says in his Epistle. Where he also says that he is the antichrist who denies that Christ has come in the flesh (See 1 John 4:3).

5. Why, then, do you boast, as it were, of the perfection of his commandments, that you do the things commanded in the Gospel? For what would those things profit, where there is no true faith, even if they were truly fulfilled by you? Did you not hear the Apostle saying: If I distribute all my goods to the poor, and deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing (1 Cor 13:3)? Why, then, do you boast, as it were, of Christian poverty, when you lack Christian love? For even robbers have among themselves what they call love, owing one another a criminal and shameful loyalty, but not the love that the Apostle commends. And in order to set it apart from the other things to be condemned and rejected, he says in another place: But the end of the commandment is love, from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned (1 Tim 1:5). Whence, then, can you have true love rising from feigned faith? Or when will you be ashamed to gloss your faith with lies, when you preach that even your first man fought with mutable deceit against his enemies, who remained in the truth of their own nature; and that Christ himself, who says I am the truth (John 14:6), faked the appearance of flesh, the death of the cross, the wounds of the passion, the scars of the resurrection? Accordingly, you want to be set above your Christ, if, while he lies, you announce the truth. But if you want to follow your Christ, who would not be wary of falsehood in you, so that even in those commandments which you say you fulfill, there should be nothing but mere deceit?

For Faustus dared to say that you do not carry copper in your belts—unless perhaps he said the truth for this reason, that you have not copper in belts, but gold also in little chests and in purses. These things would not be blamed in you, were it not that you profess one thing and live in another way. There is still living in human affairs that Constantius, now already our brother, a Catholic Christian, who had gathered many of you at Rome into his house, for the fulfillment of Mani's precepts—quite vain and silly precepts indeed, but ones which you nonetheless reckon great. When your infirmity gave way before them, you scattered, each into his own way. Hence those who chose to persevere in them made a schism from your fellowship; and because they sleep on mats, they are called Mattarii. Far unlike their bedding were Faustus's feathers and goatskin coverlets, in which abundance of delights he loathed not only the Mattarii but even the house of his own father, a poor man of Milevis. Away, then, with your lost pretense, if not from your morals, at least from your writings; lest your tongue be seen to fight with your life, as that first man with the race of darkness, with lying—not elements, but words.

6. But lest anyone reproach me for saying these things against men who do not fulfill what is enjoined on them, rather than against the very sect of that most vain error, I say this: The very precepts of Mani are such that, if you do not do them, you are deceivers; but if you do do them, you are deceived. For Christ did not command you not to pull up a plant, lest you commit murder,

he who did not forbid his disciples, as they passed through the grainfield and were hungry, to pluck the ears of grain on the sabbath (See Matt 12:1), by which he might convict both the Jews then present and the Manicheans to come: the former, because it was done on the sabbath; the latter, because it was done at all. But Mani plainly commanded that, with your hands idle, you should live off the murders of others; and those murders indeed are false, but yours are true, when by such teaching of demons you slaughter wretched souls.

7. Yet there is that heretical conceit and intolerable pride. "You see," he says, "in me those beatitudes of Christ that make up the Gospel; and do you ask whether I accept it? You see a poor man, you see a meek man, you see a peacemaker, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, enduring persecutions and hatreds for the sake of righteousness; and do you doubt whether I accept the Gospel?" If to be righteous were to justify oneself, this man would have flown into heaven by his own words while he was saying these things.

But I do not inveigh against the delights of Faustus, known to all the Hearers of the Manicheans, and especially to those at Rome. I set forth such a Manichean as Constantius was looking for, when he required those precepts to be fulfilled, not such as he refused to be seen as.

And yet, how do I see as poor in spirit one who is so proud that he believes his soul to be God, and is not ashamed that it is a captive? How meek, one who prefers to insult so great an evangelical authority rather than believe it? How a peacemaker, one who thinks that the divine nature itself, by which God is whatever he is, who alone truly is, could not have perpetual peace? How pure in heart, one in whom so many and so sacrilegious figments are in tumult? How mourning, unless his God, captured and bound, until he is loosed and escapes—yet curtailed in some part, which will be bound by the Father in the clod of darkness, and will not be mourned? How hungering and thirsting for righteousness, which Faustus did not add in his writings, I believe lest he should seem to lack it, if he confessed that he still hungered and thirsted for it?

But what righteousness do these men hunger and thirst for, whose perfect righteousness will be, when their brothers are condemned in the clod—brothers who sinned by no fault of their own, but were inexpiably infected by the enemy's corruption, against which the Father sent them—to triumph besides?

8. How do you endure persecutions and hatreds for the sake of righteousness, you for whom to preach and persuade these sacrilegious things is righteousness? Why do you not consider how little, and almost nothing, you suffer for this impious perversity, thanks to the mildness of Christian times? But, as though you were speaking to the blind and foolish, you would have it a great mark of your righteousness that you endure reproaches and suffer persecution. Further, if each is the more righteous the heavier the things he suffers, I forbear to say what is most easy to see—how much heavier the things suffered by others, defiled by all sorts of crimes and shameful deeds. This I say: if whoever suffers persecution for the name of Christ, however it has been usurped and taken up, is therefore to be said to hold the true faith and righteousness, grant that he is of truer faith and greater righteousness whom we can show to have suffered far heavier things than you. And now thousands of our martyrs meet you, and Cyprian above all, who by his very writings is shown to have believed in Christ born of the Virgin Mary. For this faith, which you detest, he went all the way to the sword and death, together with flocks of Christians who then believed thus, and who died thus and more grievously.

But Faustus, convicted or having confessed that he was a Manichean, when he and some others with him had been brought to the proconsular court, with those very Christians by whom they had been brought interceding for them, was relegated to an island with the lightest penalty—if indeed that is to be called a penalty: which the servants of God do daily of their own accord, desiring to remove themselves from the turbulent uproar of the peoples; and from which the public vows for earthly princes are wont, through clemency, to release the condemned. And then, not long after, all were dismissed from there by the same customary lot. Confess, then, that those held a truer faith and a more righteous life who deserved to endure for it things far more atrocious than you do; or cease boasting on the ground that you are detestable to many. But distinguish what it is to suffer persecution for blasphemy and to suffer persecution for righteousness; and consider, again and again diligently in your books, for which of these you suffer.

9. But how many in our communion truly do those more sublime evangelical precepts, with whose appearance you deceive the unskilled? How many people of both sexes, pure and untouched, abstaining from all intercourse; how many who have had experience of it and are afterward continent; how many distributors and renouncers of their possessions; how many subjecting the body to servitude by fasts frequent, or daily, or even incredibly continuous? How many fraternal congregations having nothing of their own, but all things in common, and these only what is necessary for food and clothing; melting one soul and one heart toward God in the fire of love? And in all these professions, how many false and lost ones are detected, how many also lie hidden, how many at first walking rightly soon fail through a perverse will; how many are found in temptations to have undertaken such a life in a sketched-out appearance with another intent, and how many, humbly and faithfully keeping their holy purpose, persevere to the end and are saved?

In whose society they appear, as it were, unequal; but yet they are joined by the same love, those who, for the sake of some bond, according to the Apostle's exhortation, have wives as though not having them, and buy as though not keeping, and use this world as though not using it (See 1 Cor 7:29ff). To these are joined, according to the abundant riches of God's mercy, even those to whom it is said: Do not defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that you may be free for prayer; and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. But this I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command (1 Cor 7:5-6). To such the same Apostle also says: Now indeed there is altogether a fault in you, that you have lawsuits among yourselves. And bearing their weakness, he says a little later: If, then, you have cases concerning secular matters, set those who are contemptible in the Church to judge them (1 Cor 6:4ff). For not only those who, to be perfect, sell or relinquish all their goods and follow the Lord belong to the kingdom of heaven; but to this Christian warfare there is also joined, by a kind of exchange of love, a certain stipendiary multitude, to whom it will be said at the end: I was hungry, and you gave me to eat (Matt 25:35), and the rest. Otherwise those would have to be condemned whose households the Apostle arranges with such diligent and careful concern, admonishing wives to be subject to their husbands, husbands to love their wives; children to obey their parents, parents to nurture their children in the discipline and correction of the Lord; servants to obey their carnal masters with fear, masters to render to servants what is just and equitable (See Col 3:18; 4:1).

But far be it that the Apostle should judge these to be alien from the evangelical commandments and to be separated from eternal life; for where the Lord says: If anyone does not carry his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple (Matt 10:38ff), exhorting the stronger to perfection—there at once he also consoled these, saying: He who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward; and he who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward. Hence not only he who gave a little wine to Timothy on account of his stomach and his frequent infirmities (See 1 Tim 5:23), but even he who has handed a cup of cold water to a healthier and stronger man, only in the name of a disciple, as there follows, will not lose his reward (Matt 10:42).

10. But why do you deceive your Hearers, who serve you with their wives, and children, and households, and houses, and fields, if whoever has not left all these things does not accept the Gospel? But because you promise them not resurrection but a revolution back into this mortality, so that they may be born again and live the life of your Elect—as vain, and silly, and sacrilegious a life as the one you live, when you are highly praised; or, if they are of better merit, that they may come into melons and cucumbers, or into some other foods which you are going to eat, so that they may quickly be purified by your belchings—you rightly make them alien from the evangelical commandments; but you yourselves too, who think and persuade such things, ought above all to separate yourselves from them.

For if this vanity pertained to evangelical faith, the Lord ought not to have said: I was hungry, and you gave me to eat (Matt 25:35); but: You were hungry, and you ate me; or: I was hungry, and I ate you. For no one, according to your ravings, will now be received into the kingdom of God on account of that merit of ministering, because he gave the saints to eat; but because either he ate those he longed for, or was eaten by those who longed to breathe him out into heaven. Nor would those say: Lord, when did we see you hungry, and give you to eat? But they would say: When did we see you hungry, and you ate us? To whom he would not reply: When you gave to one of the least of mine, you gave to me (Matt 25:40); but: When one of the least of mine ate you, I ate you.

11. Thinking and teaching these monstrosities, and living according to them, do you dare to say that you keep the evangelical precepts, and to disparage the Catholic Church, in which there are so many little ones along with the great, both of whom the Lord blesses, keeping the evangelical commandments according to their grades, and hoping for the evangelical promises? But malevolent error leads your eye to the chaff alone of our harvest; for you would quickly see the wheat there too, if you were even willing to be wheat.

But among you, both those who are feigned Manicheans are wicked, and those who are not feigned are vain. For where the faith itself is feigned, both he who uses it with pretense deceives, and he who reckons it true is deceived; nor can a good life come to be from it; for each lives by his own love, whether well or badly. But if you burned with love of the spiritual and intelligible good, and not with desire for corporeal phantasms—to say quickly what is most well known about you—you would not worship this corporeal sun as the divine substance and as the light of wisdom.

1. Faustus said: Do you accept the Old Testament?

How, when I do not keep its precepts? Indeed, I suppose you do not either: for I spat out circumcision as shameful; and, if I am not mistaken, so did you. The cessation of work on the sabbaths, as superfluous; I believe you did too. The sacrifices, as idolatry; I do not doubt you did too. As for pork, I am certainly not the only one who abstains; and you for your part do not eat it alone. I, indeed, because I reckon all flesh unclean; but you, because nothing is unclean—by both of which, by each of us, the Old Testament is destroyed. The weeks of eating unleavened bread, the Feast of Booths, each of us despised as useless and vain. Not to insert purple into linen garments. To count it among adulteries to put on a garment of mixed linen and wool. To count it among sacrileges, if need be, to yoke an ox and an ass together. Not to appoint as priest a bald man or one with stiff bristling hair or a man of similar mark, because such are unclean before God—both of us despised these, laughed at them, held them neither in second place nor in first: all of which are precepts and ordinances of the Old Testament.

What you charge me with, then, is common to you with me, whether it is to be reckoned a crime or rightly done; for each of us rejects the Old Testament. So if you ask what difference there is between my faith and yours, it is this: that it pleases you to lie, and to act in an ignoble way, so that what you hate in mind you praise in word; whereas I have not learned to deceive, I say what I think, I confess that I hate the teachers of such base things as much as the precepts themselves.

2. Augustine replied: How and why the Old Testament is accepted by the heirs of the New Testament we have already said above. But since a little earlier Faustus dealt with its promises, and now wished to deal with its precepts, I answer that these men are wholly ignorant of the difference between precepts for living life and precepts for signifying life. For example: You shall not covet (Exod 20:17) is a precept for living life; You shall circumcise every male on the eighth day (Gen 17:10-12) is a precept for signifying life.

For from this lack of skill the Manicheans, and all to whom the writings of the Old Testament are displeasing, not understanding that whatever God commanded the earlier people to observe was a shadow of things to come, and noting that these things are not now observed, blame, after the manner of the present time, those things which were certainly suited to that time, in which the things now made manifest were signified as to come.

But what will they say against the Apostle, who says: All these things 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)? Behold, he himself has shown why those writings are accepted by us, and why it is no longer necessary that those signs of things be observed by us. For when he says, They were written for our sake, he shows beyond doubt with how great care they must be read and understood by us, and in how great authority held, since they were written for our sake. But when he says, They were figures of us, and, They happened to them in figure (1 Cor 10:6), he shows that there is no longer need, when we are dealing with the things themselves now made manifest, to serve the celebration of the foretelling figures. Hence he says in another place: 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 are a shadow of things to come (Col 2:16-17). Here too, when he says, Let no one judge you in these things, he declares how unnecessary it now is that these be observed; but when he says, which are a shadow of things to come, he shows how fitting it was that they be observed at that time, in which the things that have now shone forth manifest to us were foretold as to come, through such shadows of figures.

3. Accordingly, if the Manicheans were justified by the resurrection of the Lord—whose day of resurrection was, from the day of his passion indeed, the third, but after the sabbath day, that is, after the seventh, the eighth—they would surely be stripped of the carnal veil of mortal desires; and rejoicing in the circumcision of the heart, they would not deride it as foreshadowed and figured in the flesh in the time of the Old Testament, although in the time of the New Testament they would not compel it to be done and observed. For in what member is the stripping away of carnal and mortal concupiscence more fittingly figured than where the carnal and mortal offspring arises?

But, as the Apostle says: All things are clean to the clean; but to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean, but both their mind and their conscience are polluted (Titus 1:15). And so these men, who seem all too clean to themselves, because they turn away from those members as unclean, or pretend to turn away, have fallen into such uncleannesses of unbelief and error that, while they detest the circumcision of the flesh, which the Apostle called a seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:11), they yet believe that the divine members of their God are held bound and defiled in those very carnal members; so that, when they call the flesh unclean, they are compelled to say that God too, in the part by which he is held there, has been made unclean—since they assert that he needs to be cleansed: until which is done, as far as it can be done, they say he meanwhile now suffers all the things that flesh suffers, not only in the labor and pain of afflictions, but also in the pleasure of corruptions.

For they say they spare him by not having intercourse, lest he be more tightly entangled in fleshly knots and more filthily defiled. Since, then, the Apostle says, All things are clean to the clean—to men, of course, who can be changed for the worse by perversity of will—how much more are all things clean to God, who always remains unchangeable and incapable of contamination? Of whose divine wisdom it is said in those books which you defile yourselves all the more vehemently by reproaching, that nothing defiled enters into it, and that it reaches everywhere because of its cleanness (Wis 7:24-25). Therefore, O most unclean vanity, does it so displease you that God, to whom all things are clean, commanded the sign of human regeneration to be set in the human member by which the human race is propagated; and yet it pleases you that even in the shameful deeds which are perpetrated with that member by lewd men, your very God, to whom nothing is clean, is in part of his nature stained and corrupted? For what does he suffer in various base corruptions, whom you believe to be defiled even by conjugal intercourse?

To that too which you are wont to say—"Was there, then, no place for God to prefigure the seal of the righteousness of faith except in that member?"—it is answered: Why not there too? First, because all things are clean to the clean, how much more to God? Then, because the Apostle said that this seal of the righteousness of faith was given to Abraham in such circumcision. But do not you blush, if you can, when it is said to you: Was there, then, no place for your God to act, that he should not entangle part of his nature in those members which you so spit upon? These members are indeed called shameful by men on account of the corruptible and penal propagation of our mortality which arises from them: to which the chaste apply modesty, the lewd wantonness, God righteousness.

4. The cessation of work on the sabbaths we now indeed reckon superfluous to observe, ever since the hope of our eternal rest was revealed; yet not superfluous to read and understand. For since, in prophetic times, the things which have been laid open to us in this present time had to be prefigured and foretold not only by words but also by deeds, by that sign which we read, this thing which we hold was foreshadowed. But I want you to tell me why you are unwilling to fulfill your own cessation. For the Jews, on their sabbath, which they still savor carnally, not only pick no fruit in the field, but neither cut nor cook in the house. But you, while ceasing, wait for one of your Hearers, for your sake, to dash out into the garden armed with a little knife or sickle, a murderer of gourds, to bring you—wondrous to say—living corpses of them. For if he does not kill them, what do you fear in such a deed? But if they are killed when they are picked, how is there life in them, which you assert you help to purify and renew by eating and belching? You receive, then, living gourds, which, if you could, you ought to swallow whole; so that, after that one wound, in which your Hearer became guilty when he picked them, needing your indulgence to be freed, they might at least thereafter reach intact and whole the workshop of your belly, where you could reform your God shattered in that battle. But as it is, before your teeth fall upon grinding them, they are cut up by you piece by piece, if it pleases the palate so: by such frequent wounds of theirs, how are you not guilty?

See how it would profit you to do daily what the Jews do once in seven days, and to cease even from such household work. Again, what do the gourds suffer in the fire, where surely the life that is in them is not reformed? For a boiling pot cannot be compared to a holy belly; and yet you mock the cessation on the sabbath as superfluous. How much more sound it would be not only not to blame it in the Fathers, when it was not superfluous, but even now, when it is already superfluous, to keep it yourselves, rather than this practice of yours which is not acceptable in its signification but damnable in its error—by not fulfilling which you are guilty according to the opinion of your own vanity, and by fulfilling which you are vain according to the judgment of truth? For you say that fruit feels pain when it is plucked from the tree, feels it when it is cut, when it is ground, when it is cooked, when it is eaten. You ought, then, to feed only on those things which can be swallowed raw and unharmed, so that they might suffer at least the one pain, when they are plucked, not by you but by your Hearers.

4.2. But you say: How do we help so great a life, if we consume only those things which can be swallowed uncooked and soft? If, then, by this compensation you inflict so many pains on your foods, why do you abstain from that one alone to which this necessity most of all compels you? For fruit can be eaten raw too, as some of you have trained yourselves to do, so as to do this not only with fruits but even with all vegetables. But unless it is plucked, or cut down, or in some way taken from the earth or the tree, it can in no way come to be eaten. This, then, ought to have been easily pardonable, without which you could not help him—not those many torments which you do not hesitate to inflict on the members of your God in preparing food.

But the tree weeps, you say, when its fruit is picked: for this you are not ashamed to say. Surely all the life that is there knows and senses beforehand who comes to it. When the Elect come, then, and pick the fruit, it ought to rejoice, not weep, compensating that passing pain with such felicity, and escaping such great misery as it would suffer if it fell to others. Why, then, do you not pluck the fruit, when by plucking it you inflict so many blows and pains? Answer, if you can. Nor do your very fasts suit you: for the furnace ought not to be idle, in which the spiritual gold is purified from its mixture with dung, and the divine members are loosed from their pitiable bonds. Therefore he is the more merciful among you who can so train himself that, with no harm to his health, he often takes raw foods and consumes much. But you both eat cruelly, by inflicting such penalties on your food, and fast cruelly, by ceasing from the purification of the divine members.

5. And yet you dare even to execrate the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and to name them idolatry, and to associate us too in such sacrilege. Whence, on our behalf, we answer first that they are no longer in our works, yet we embrace them in the mysteries of the divine Scriptures, for understanding the things foretold by them; because they too were figures of us, and all such things, in many and various ways, signified the one sacrifice whose memory we now celebrate. Hence, once this was revealed and offered in its own time, those things were removed from the celebration of doing, but remained in the authority of signifying. For they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11).

But in them, evidently, the killing of animals disturbs you, when this whole creation in a way serves the uses of men conditionally. But you, who do not hold out bread to a hungry beggar, are merciful to cattle, in which you believe human souls reside. The Lord Jesus, however, was in your view cruel, when he permitted the demons to go into the herd of swine, when they asked it of him (Matt 8:32). He too, even before the sacrifice of his body was shown forth through the passion, said to a certain leper whom he had cleansed: Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer your gift, which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them (Luke 5:14). For rather, since God often testifies through the Prophets that he needs no such gift, and since it is easy to perceive by reason that he, who needs nothing, has need of no such thing, the human mind is compelled to inquire what he wished to teach us through these things—he who surely would not have commanded that things he does not need be offered to him for nothing, unless he were showing in them something which it would profit us to know and which had to be prefigured by such signs.

But how much better and more honorable it would be for you to be subject to these sacrifices—though no longer necessary for our time, yet signifying and teaching something—than to command and believe that living victims of food are offered to you by your Hearers! For when the apostle Paul said most fittingly of certain men who preach the Gospel for the sake of banquets: Whose God is the belly (Phil 3:19), with how much more arrogant impiety do you boast, who are not afraid to call your belly not God, but—what is of more wicked audacity—the cleanser of God? Whose madness, moreover, is it to wish to seem pious because they abstain from the killing of animals, when they say that all their foods have those same souls; on which, living, as they think, they inflict so many wounds with hands and teeth?

6. But why, if you are unwilling to eat flesh, do you not slaughter the animals themselves as offered to your God, so that those souls, which you think not only human but so divine that you believe them to be the very members of God, may be released from the prison of the flesh, and be commended by your prayers not to return again? Or do you help them more by the belly than by the mind, and is that nature of God rather saved which has deserved to be breathed out through your bowels, than that which is commended by your prayers? Therefore you do not sacrifice cattle to your belly for this reason: because you cannot consume them alive, so as to free their souls by the intercession of your stomach.

O blessed vegetables, which, though plucked by hand, and cut by iron, and tormented by fire, and crushed by the tooth, are nonetheless permitted to arrive alive at the altars of your intestines! And O wretched cattle, which, since they leave their own body more quickly, cannot enter into your bodies! So, still raving, you think we are enemies of the Old Testament because we reckon no flesh unclean, holding the sentence of the Apostle who says: All things are clean to the clean (Titus 1:15); and that where the Lord says: Not what enters your mouth defiles you, but what comes out (Matt 15:11).

This the Lord did not say to the crowds alone, as your Adimantus—whom Faustus praises above all after Mani—wished it to be understood when he slandered the Old Testament; but, withdrawn from the crowds as well, he spoke this same thing to his disciples more evidently and expressly. For when Adimantus had set this sentence of the Lord against the Old Testament, because in it certain unclean things of flesh are written, from which that people was commanded to abstain, he feared it would be said to him: Why, then, do you reckon not some but all flesh unclean, and refrain from eating any, when you yourself adduce the evangelical testimony that a man is not defiled by the things which enter into the mouth, and pass into the belly, and are cast into the privy? And so, attempting to escape these most narrow straits, which choke his deceit by most manifest truth, he says that the Lord said this to the crowds—as though he spoke true things to the few in secret, but cast false things to the crowds: when both to believe this of the Lord is sacrilegious, and all who read know that he said this more plainly to his disciples even when withdrawn from the crowds.

Therefore, since at the beginning of these writings of his Faustus so admires Adimantus that he prefers to him only Mani, I ask in brief whether this sentence of the Lord, by which he said that a man is not defiled by the things that enter his mouth, is true or false. If they say it is false, why did so great a teacher of theirs, Adimantus, saying that it was uttered by Christ, set it against the Old Testament to assail it? But if it is true, why do they believe themselves to be defiled against it, if they eat any flesh whatever? Unless perhaps they wish to answer truly, and to say that the Apostle did not say: All things are clean to heretics, but: All things are clean to the clean. Why these things are not clean to them, the same Apostle goes on to say: But to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean; but both their mind and their conscience are polluted (Titus 1:15). Hence indeed to the Manicheans nothing at all is clean, since they contend that even the very substance or nature of God could not only be defiled, but has even in part been defiled; and not only defiled, but cannot in every part be recovered and cleansed. Hence it is strange that they say they reckon all flesh unclean, and abstain from it on this account, as though they reckon something to be clean, not only of foods but of all creatures. For even the vegetables themselves, and the fruits, and all crops, and the whole earth, and heaven, they declare to be defiled by their mixture with the race of darkness. Would, then, that they agreed with their error in the other foods as well, and, by abstaining from all the things they call unclean, would rather die of hunger than stubbornly speak such blasphemies! For who would not understand that this is more useful for those unwilling to correct and amend themselves?

7. But to the Old Testament, where certain flesh foods are forbidden, why this sentence is not contrary, by which the Apostle says: All things are clean to the clean; and: Every creature of God is good (1 Tim 4:4)—let them understand, if they can, that the Apostle said this of the natures themselves; while those writings, on account of certain prefigurations suited to the time, called certain animals unclean, not by nature, but by signification. And so, for example, if the question is asked about a pig and a lamb, both are clean by nature, because every creature of God is good; but by a certain signification the lamb is clean, the pig unclean: just as if you said "fool" and "wise," each of these words, in the nature of the voice and the letters and syllables of which it consists, is certainly clean; but by signification one of these words, the one called "fool," can be called unclean, not by its own nature, but because it signifies something unclean. And perhaps what the pig is in the figures of things, the fool is in the kind of things; and both that animal, and these two syllables that say "fool," signify one and the same thing.

For that animal was set in the Law as unclean, on the ground that it does not chew the cud: but this is not its fault, but its nature. There are, however, men signified by this animal, unclean by their own fault, not by nature: who, though they gladly hear the words of wisdom, afterward do not think of them at all. For to recall the useful thing you have heard, as it were from the inner part of memory, as if to the mouth of thought, by the sweetness of remembering—what else is this than in a way spiritually to chew the cud? Those who do not do this are figured by the kind of those animals. Hence the very abstinence from such flesh forewarned us to beware such a fault. For since wisdom itself is a desirable treasure, of this cleanness of chewing the cud and uncleanness of not chewing the cud it is written in another place: A desirable treasure rests in the mouth of the wise; but the foolish man gulps it down (Prov 21:20). These likenesses of things in figured expressions and observances usefully and pleasantly move rational minds, for the exercise of inquiring and comparing. But to the earlier people many such things were enjoined not only to be heard but also to be observed. For it was a time in which the things to be revealed in a later time had to be prophesied not only in words but also in deeds. When these were revealed through Christ and in Christ, the burdens of observances were not imposed on the faith of the nations, yet the authority of the prophecy was commended.

Behold, we have said for what cause, although according to the sentence of the Lord and the Apostle we hold no flesh of animals unclean, we yet are not opposed to the Old Testament, where some were called unclean. Now do you say why you reckon flesh unclean.

8. If, according to your error, it is on account of the mixture with the race of darkness, then it is not the flesh, but your very God that is unclean in that part which he sent and mingled, to be absorbed and defiled, as though for warring down and capturing the enemy; and then, on account of that very mixture, whatever else you eat is also unclean. But you say: Flesh is far more unclean. And why flesh should be more unclean, it would be long to recount their ravings on this matter; but I will touch briefly on what is enough, so that the reprovers of the Old Testament may be inspected—men so worn out by such an ancientness of folly that, as accusers of the flesh, they are convicted of savoring flesh alone, with no spiritual truth. For perhaps this somewhat longer reply will so instruct the reader against them that in the other replies so many words will not be required of us.

For these vain talkers and seducers of the mind say that in that battle, when their first man entangled the race of darkness with deceptive elements, with the princes of both sexes captured from there, when the world was being constructed from them, very many of them were bound in the celestial fabrics, among whom were also some pregnant females: who, when the heaven had begun to revolve, being unable to bear that same dizziness, shook out their conceptions by abortion; and these same aborted offspring, both male and female, fell from heaven to earth, lived, grew, had intercourse, begot. Hence, they say, is the origin of all the flesh that moves on earth, in water, in air.

Therefore, if the origin of flesh is from heaven, it is most absurd on that account to think it more unclean: especially since, in the very structure of the world, they say those same princes of darkness are so bound throughout all the joinings, from the highest down to the lowest, that the more of the good mixed in any of them had, the more loftily it deserved to be placed; and by this, flesh, whose origin is from heaven, ought to be cleaner than crops, which arise from the earth.

Then, what can be said so insane as that conceived offspring, before the mixture of life, were so much the more full of life that, both aborted and rushing from heaven to earth, they lived; whereas, with life mixed in, unless brought forth at the mature time, they cannot live, and if they fall from a slightly higher place, they die at once? Surely, if the realm of life waged war against the realm of death, the mixed-in life ought to have made them more full of life, not more corruptible. But if each thing keeps its own incorruption more in its own nature, they ought to have preached not two natures, one good and one evil, but two good ones, of which one is better.

Whence, then, do they assert that flesh is more unclean, which they affirm draws its descent from heaven—at least the flesh known to all? For they suppose that the very first bodies of the princes of darkness arose, like little worms, from the trees born there; and those trees from those five elements. Accordingly, if the bodies of animals have their first origin from trees, their second from heaven, what cause is there that they should be reckoned more unclean than the fruits of trees? If it is because, when they die, they lose their soul, so that whatever remains after life has deserted it is now unclean—why, by the same reasoning, are vegetables or fruits not unclean, which surely, as was said above, die when they are plucked or torn off? For they are unwilling to be guilty of these murders, while they pluck nothing from earth or tree.

Then, since they affirm that there are two souls in one body of a living thing, one good from the race of light, the other evil from the race of darkness—when an animal is killed, does the good soul flee and the evil remain? For if this were so, the slain animal would live as it lived in the race of darkness, when it had only the soul of its own race, by which it had even rebelled against the divine realms. Since, then, in the death of any animal, both souls, good and evil, desert the flesh, why is the flesh called unclean, as though deserted by the good soul alone? For even if some remnants of life remain, they remain from both: for they say that not even the dung itself remains without some scanty remnants of the members of God. They find, then, no cause why they should assert that flesh is more unclean than crops.

But evidently, trying to display their deceptive chastity, they think flesh more unclean because it exists from intercourse: as though they were not all the more vehemently compelled to help that divine member by eating it, the more tightly bound they think it there. Finally, if this is the cause of the greater uncleanness of flesh, let them eat the bodies of those animals which do not arise from intercourse, such as the innumerable kinds of worms, some of which, born from trees, certain regions of Venetia commonly eat. They ought also to take as food the frogs which the earth suddenly generates from a single rain, so as to free the members of their God mixed in such forms, if they detest the flesh that is propagated by intercourse; and they would convict the human race of error, because they eat hens and doves, procreated from the coupling of males and females, and reject the cleaner daughters of heaven and earth, the frogs.

For according to their fable, the first princes of darkness, whose parents were trees, are cleaner than Mani himself, whom father and mother begot by intercourse; cleaner too are their lice, which are born without intercourse, from the sweat of the flesh or the exhalation of the body, than these very wretches themselves, who were born of parents in intercourse. Or if they now think whatever is born of flesh, even without intercourse, to be unclean for this reason, because the flesh itself is from intercourse, then vegetables and fruits will be unclean, which have sprung up more fertilely and abundantly from dung.

Here let them see what they are to do, or what they are to answer, who say that fruits are cleaner than flesh. For what is cast out from flesh more unclean than dung, and what is applied to crops more productive? Surely they themselves say that through the chewings and digestions of foods, life flees from there, and something scanty remains in the dung. Why, then, where scanty life remains, do your foods, that is, the fruits of the earth, arise from dung both better and larger and more numerous? Flesh is fed not on the refuse of the earth, but on its produce; but the earth is made fruitful by the refuse of flesh, not by its produce.

Let them choose which is cleaner; or, now corrected, let them cease to be unclean and unbelieving, to whom nothing is clean, and let them embrace with us the Apostle who says: All things are clean to the clean (Titus 1:15). The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof (Ps 24:1 (23:1)). Every creature of God is good (1 Tim 4:4). For all things that exist naturally are good in their own order; and no one sins in them, except one who, not keeping his own order in obedience to God, disturbs their order too by using them badly.

9.1. But our fathers who pleased God kept their own order in that obedience, so that whatever God distributed by commanding at the suitable times, they observed it just as he distributed it. And so they did not, at that time, eat certain flesh given for food—though all clean by nature, yet unclean by some signification—when it was commanded not to be eaten, in order that by such significations the future manifestation of things might be prefigured; but they would have been as guilty, the men of that time and that people, if they had despised observing both unleavened bread and the rest of this kind, in which the Apostle says there was a shadow of things to come (1 Cor 10:11)—when those things had to be done thus, and these which are now revealed had then to be thus foretold—as we would be senseless if now, with the New Testament made manifest, we thought those foretelling observances profited us anything.

Just as sacrilegious and impious men we would be, if those same books which were written for our sake—so that we, recognizing the things now revealed to us and announced in manifestation as foretold to those men so long before by those figures, might faithfully and firmly hold them—we thought were therefore to be cast off, because the things written there the Lord commands us no longer to observe corporeally, but to understand and do spiritually. For they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come, as the same Apostle likewise says (1 Cor 10:11). For all things that were written before were written for our instruction (Rom 15:4). Therefore, not to eat unleavened bread for the appointed seven days was a sin in the time of the Old Testament; but in the time of the New Testament it is not a sin:

but in the hope of the age to come which we have in Christ, who, both clothing our soul with righteousness and clothing our body with immortality (See 1 Cor 15:53-54), renews the whole of us, to believe that we shall suffer or do anything from the necessity and want of the old corruption is always a sin, as long as those seven days are revolving by which time runs its course. But this, in the times of the Old Testament hidden in figure, was understood by certain holy ones; in the time of the New Testament, revealed in manifestation, it is preached to the peoples. Hence that Scripture was then a precept, now a testimony.

Not to celebrate the Feast of Booths was once a sin (Lev 23:34); now it is not a sin: but not to be joined to the tabernacle of God, which is the Church, is always a sin; but then it was treated under a figured precept, now it is read in a revealed testimony. For that which was then done would not be called the tabernacle of testimony, unless by a certain fitness of signification it bore witness to some truth that had to be declared in its own time.

To mix purple with linen garments, and to be clothed in a garment of mixed linen and wool, was once a sin (See Deut 22:11); now it is not a sin: but to live in a disordered way, and to wish to mix professions of different kinds—so that either a consecrated woman should have the ornaments of the married, or one who, not being continent, has married should bear the appearance of a virgin—is in every way a sin; and so is anything that is woven together unfittingly out of a different kind in anyone's life. But that which was then figured in garments is now declared in morals. For that was the time of signifying, this of manifesting. Therefore that very Scripture, which was then the exactor of signifying works, is now the witness of the things signified; and what was then observed for foretelling is now recited for confirmation.

To yoke an ox and an ass together for work was then not lawful (See Deut 22:10); now it is lawful. For it was declared through the Apostle, when he recalled the Scripture about not muzzling the ox that treads out the grain, saying: Is it for the oxen that God is concerned? Why, then, is it now read, when what it forbade is now lawful? Because the same Apostle, following on there, says: For our sake the Scripture says it (1 Cor 9:9-10). And surely it is impious that we should not read what was written for our sake: for it was written more for our sake, to whom it is made manifest, than for those in whom it was figured. For anyone, if need be, yokes an ox and an ass without harm to the work; but a wise man and a fool—not so that one should command and the other obey, but equally, from equal power, so as to announce the word of God—no one makes companions without scandal. And so we hold the same Scripture, both then commanding by its power that what would now be opened should be covered in shadows, and now bearing witness by its authority that what was then covered is opened in the light.

9.2. But concerning the bald man and the one with bristling hair (Lev 13:40), that the Law called them unclean, Faustus had paid too little attention, or had fallen upon a faulty manuscript. But would that he himself had been willing to have a bald forehead, and had not blushed to fix on it the cross of Christ: surely he would have believed that Christ, who cries out, I am the truth (John 14:6), neither fell with false wounds nor rose with false scars. Indeed he even says: "I have not learned to deceive; I say what I think." He is therefore not a disciple of his own Christ, whom in his insanity he supposes to have shown false scars to his doubting disciples, and he wants himself to be believed, as though not deceiving, not only about his other vanities, but even about that very deceit of Christ: whether he is better than Christ, by whose deceiving he himself does not deceive; or whether he is the disciple of that very man—not of a truthful Christ, but of a deceitful Mani—since even in this he deceives, in which he glories that he has not learned to deceive?

1. Faustus said: Why do you not believe in the genealogy of Jesus?

There are indeed many causes, but the chief is this: that he himself nowhere with his own mouth confesses that he has a father, or a lineage, on earth; but on the contrary, that he is not of this world, that he proceeded from God the Father, that he descended from heaven, that he has no mother and brothers except those who do the will of his Father who is in heaven (See Matt 12:50). Besides, those very men who ascribe these genealogies to him seem not to have known him before his birth; nor immediately when he was born, so that they might be believed to have written the things they saw done concerning him with their own eyes; but they were joined to him when he was already a young man and mature, that is, of about thirty years—if indeed age too can be ascribed to divine things without blasphemy.

Therefore, since in all testimony of truth this is always wont to be asked, whether someone heard or saw a thing, but these men confess neither that they heard from him this order of generation, or that he was born at all, nor that they saw it with their eyes, since they came to know him a long time afterward, that is, after his Baptism: to me, and to everyone who judges rightly, it seems as foolish to believe this as if someone should call a blind and deaf man as a witness in court.

2. Augustine replied: What he calls the chief cause why he does not accept the genealogy of Jesus Christ is there most plainly shown to be defeated, for those who read what we said above about the Son of man, which Christ so often testifies himself to be (Matt 8:20), and about the Son of God, how the same one is also the son of man (Matt 9:6); how according to divinity he has no lineage on earth, but according to the flesh is of the seed of David, as apostolic teaching testifies (Rom 1:3; 2 Tim 2:8). Hence he must be believed and understood both to have gone forth from the Father (See John 16:28), and to have come from heaven (See John 6:41), and yet here, the Word made flesh, to have dwelt among men (See John 1:14).

But if they think on this account that he had no mother or lineage on earth, because he said: Who is my mother, or who are my brothers? (Matt 12:48)—it remains that they affirm that his disciples too, to whom he gave this example in himself, that they should despise the bond of earthly lineage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, had no fathers, because he said to them: Call no one on earth your father; for one is your Father, God (Matt 23:9). What, then, he taught these men about fathers, he himself first did about his mother and brothers: as also in many other things, in which he deigned to offer himself to us, that we might imitate him, and to go before, that we might follow. Therefore this man, who is so defeated in what he thinks is his chief point, must be observed—how he lies fallen and entangled in the rest.

For he who says that the Apostles, who announced not only his divine but also his human birth, are not to be believed, because they joined him later when he was a young man, and neither saw him born nor said that they heard this from him—why, then, do they believe John when he says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing (John 1:1ff), and the rest which please them, although they do not understand it? Let them say where John saw this, or where he said that he heard this from the Lord himself. For whatever they say is the source from which John could know this, from that same source we believe that all the announcers of Christ's nativity could know what they announced.

Next I ask, on what grounds they believe the Lord said: Who is my mother, or who are my brothers? If it is because the Evangelist narrated this, why do they not also believe him in that: that his mother and brothers were seeking him (Matt 12:46ff)? But if he lied about what they refuse to believe, how do they believe him that Christ said what they refuse to understand?

Next, if Matthew could not know Christ to have been born, because he had joined him already as a young man, whence could Mani, born so many years afterward, know Christ to have not been born? They will say: The Holy Spirit, who was in Mani, knew this. Indeed, if he were the Holy Spirit, he would have said true things. But why do we not rather believe about Christ his disciples, who clung to him even bodily—who could not only know, through the Holy Spirit imparted to them by him, if anything lay hidden in human affairs, but, with memory so fresh and present, even by human sense alone, gathered Christ's lineage according to the flesh and his whole origin?

And yet the Apostles are called blind and deaf witnesses. Would that you had been not only blind and deaf, lest you should learn such vain and sacrilegious things, but mute as well, lest you should say them!

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament?

Because I have already been forestalled by the New; and the old does not go with the new, as Scripture testifies. For, No one, it says, sews a new patch onto an old garment, otherwise a greater tear is made (Matt 9:16; Luke 5:36). Since, then, I beware of making a greater tear, as you do, I do not mix Christian newness with Hebrew oldness. For who would not judge it even sordid, when one is clothed in new garments, not to give the old ones to one's inferiors? Therefore, even if I had been born a Jew, as the Apostles were, it would still have been worthy for me, having received the New Testament, to repudiate the Old, as they themselves did. But as it is, having both obtained by the benefit of nature that I was not born under the yoke of servitude, and Christ at once meeting me with the full gift of liberty, how wretched and foolish and, besides, ungrateful will I be if I further bind myself over to servitude? For Paul reproaches the Galatians for this, that, relapsing into circumcision, they went back to the weak and beggarly elements, which they wished to serve anew (Gal 4; 5). How, then, should I commit that for which I see another reproached? It is base to return into servitude, but baser to go into it.

2. Augustine replied: We have already shown sufficiently above why and how we hold the authority of the Old Testament—not for the imitation of Jewish servitude, but for the witnessing of Christian liberty. For it is not my voice, but the Apostle's: that all these things 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). Therefore we do not do in servitude the things commanded for foretelling us, but read in liberty the things written for confirming us. Who, then, does not now understand from what the Apostle calls back the Galatians—not those reading the Scripture of circumcision religiously, but those already wishing to be circumcised superstitiously (See Gal 4; 5)?

Hence we do not sew a new patch onto an old garment; but we are instructed in the kingdom of heaven, after the likeness of that householder whom the Lord recalls bringing forth from his treasure new things and old (See Matt 13:52). But he sews a new patch onto an old garment who wishes to have spiritual continence and has not yet laid aside carnal hope. For read diligently, and see that the Lord, asked about fasting, replied: No one sews a new patch onto an old garment (Matt 9:16). For the disciples still loved the Lord carnally, since they were even afraid of losing him by his being slain. Hence he calls Peter, who called him back from the passion, Satan, because he savored not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men (Matt 16:23). Accordingly, consider, in that fantasy of yours about the kingdom of God, from which you love and adore this light of the sun visible to the flesh, as though set before you for an example, what carnal hope you bear; and you will find how your fasts are sewn, as it were, to the prudence of the flesh, like an old garment.

But seeing that a new patch does not go with an old garment, how could the members of your God cohere with the princes of darkness—not joined and stitched, but, what is more violent, mixed and concreted? Or is each old, because each is false, and each is of the prudence of the flesh? Unless perhaps you wish to prove from this that one was new and the other old, because a greater tear was made; so that the wretched patch was cut off from the realm of light, and fixed with eternal punishment to the clod of darkness. And yet he thinks himself clever to prick, as it were with the needle of his tongue, the supports of the divine Scriptures—a mender, or a beggarly wearer, of the filth of such fables.

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament?

If the Apostles, born under it, were permitted to depart from it, why am I not permitted not to take up that under which I was not born? For we are all born Gentiles, not Jews, nor, in the end, Christians; but the Old Testament leads some to itself out of that same Gentile state, and makes them Jews; the New leads others, and initiates them as Christians: just as if two trees, a sweet one and a bitter one, transferred into themselves, by their roots, the strength of one earth, to be changed by their qualities. The Apostles, then, passing into the sweet from the bitter—how mad will I be, if I am turned into the bitter from the sweet?

2. Augustine replied: Why, then, does the Apostle, who you say, having left Judaism, passed from bitterness into sweetness, rather say that the branches broken off from there are those who, from that very people, refused to believe in Christ; and that in the very root of the olive, that is, the origin of the holy Hebrews, the nations were grafted, like a wild olive, that they might become partakers of the richness of the olive?

For when he warned the Gentiles, on account of the fall of the Jews, not to be proud, he spoke thus: For I say to you Gentiles: as long indeed as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I will glorify my ministry, if by any means I can provoke to emulation my own flesh, that I may save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be, but life from the dead? But if the first fruits are holy, so is the lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them, and have become a sharer of the root and of the richness of the olive, do not boast against the branches. But if you boast, you do not bear the root, but the root bears you.

You say, then: The branches were broken off that I might be grafted in. Well. They were broken off because of unbelief. But you stand by faith. Do not be high-minded, but fear: for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. See, then, the goodness and the severity of God: toward those who fell, indeed, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you remain in his goodness; otherwise you too will be cut off. And they too, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.

For if you were cut from the wild olive that is natural to you, and grafted, against nature, into a good olive, how much more will these, who are according to nature, be grafted into their own olive? For I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of this mystery, that you may not be wise in your own eyes: that blindness has come in part upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in, and so all Israel should be saved (Rom 11:13ff).

You see, then, that you, who are unwilling to be grafted into this root, are not indeed like the broken branches, as the carnal and impious people of the Jews is, but have remained in the bitterness of the wild olive. For what does it savor of, except the wild olive of the Gentiles, to adore the sun and the moon? Unless perhaps you think you are no longer in the wild olive of the Gentiles, because you have added thorns of a new kind, and have fashioned, not with a craftsman's hand, but with a perverse heart, a false Christ, whom you worship along with the sun and the moon.

Be grafted, then, into the root of the olive, to which the Apostle rejoices to have been restored, he who had been among the branches broken off through unbelief. For he says he was freed from there, when he rejoices to have passed from Judaism to Christ, because Christ was always preached in that root and in that tree: those who, when he came, did not believe in him, were broken off from there; and those who believed were grafted in there:

to whom, lest they be proud, it is said: Do not be high-minded, but fear: for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. But lest there be despair of the broken ones themselves, he says a little later: And they too, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from the wild olive that is natural to you, and grafted, against nature, into a good olive, how much more will these, who are according to nature, be grafted into their own olive? (Rom 11:23-24)

Behold the source from which he too glories, freed from the breaking off, and restored to the richness of the root. Let those among you, then, whom impiety broke off from there, return and be grafted in again. But those who were never there, let them come, cut off from their natural barrenness, to be partakers of the fruitfulness.

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament?

Because both from it, and from the New, we have learned not to covet what is another's. But what, you say, does the Old Testament have that is another's? Rather, what does it have that is not another's? It promises riches, and fullness of the belly, and sons and grandsons, and a long life, and with these the kingdom of Canaan: but all these to the circumcised, and to those who observe sabbaths, and sacrifice to themselves, and abstain from pork, and the rest of this kind. Since I neglect these, and so does every Christian, as silly, of course, and in no way pertaining to the salvation of the soul, I therefore recognize that what it promises no longer regards me:

and mindful that there is a commandment, You shall not covet what is another's (Exod 20:17; Rom 7:7), I have willingly and gladly allowed the Jews to keep their own goods, content, of course, with the Gospel alone and the splendid inheritance of the kingdom of heaven. For just as I would rightly rebuke a Jew, if he usurped the Gospel for himself, saying: Shameless man, what have you to do with that whose precepts you do not keep?—so I fear lest a Jew should rebuke me with the same words, for holding the Old Testament whose commandments I despise.

2. Augustine replied: He is not ashamed often to repeat the same vain things, but it irks me often to reply with the same true things. So whoever seeks a reply even to these, let him read what we said above. But to a Jew saying to me: Why do you hold the Old Testament, whose precepts you do not keep?—I reply that the precepts for living life are kept by Christians even from those very books; but the precepts for signifying life were rightly observed then, when those things were being foretold which have now been revealed.

Therefore I do not observe even these for religion, yet I hold them for testimony: just as I hold the carnal promises too, which are contained there, whence properly it is called the Old Testament. For although eternal things to be hoped for have been revealed to me, I yet read those things as bearing witness, which happened to them in figure; but were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11). And so, if you have heard what we reply to the Jews, hear also what we set against the Manicheans.

3. Faustus certainly said that we can be disturbed, if the Jews say to us: Why do you hold the Old Testament, whose precepts you do not observe? To whom we reply, with the authority of that same Scripture venerated and kept. What do you reply, when it is said to you: Why do you hold the evangelical books, whose followers you feign to be, in order to deceive the unskilled; and the things written there, you not only do not believe, but even assail with all the strength you can? Surely you see that you can answer the things set against you from the New Testament even less than we can answer the things set against us from the Old.

For all the things written in the Old, we say to be both true, and divinely commanded, and distributed at suitable times. But you, when the things written in the books of the New Testament are set against you, and are not accepted by you, failing to reply, and with your throat choked by manifest truth, say with wounded breath that they have been falsified. What else could the choked mouths of liars breathe out? Or rather, what else could the pierced corpses of the dead stink of?

And yet Faustus confessed that he had learned not to covet what is another's, not only from the New Testament but also from the Old: which surely he could not learn from his own God. For that God, if he did not covet what was another's, why did he construct new ages upon the land of darkness, where they had never been? Or will he say: That race of darkness first coveted my kingdom, which was another's to it? Then he imitated the race of darkness, so that he too coveted what was another's? Or had the realm of light been too narrow before? War, then, was to be desired, that breadth of ruling might be acquired from victory. But if that is good, it could have been coveted before; only it was being waited for that the hostile race should first break out into war, by which it might be assailed, as it were, more justly. But if it is not good, why, when the enemy was conquered, did he wish his kingdom to grow upon another's land, when before, content with his own bounds, he had lived in full felicity?

But would that these men were truly willing to learn from those writings these very precepts for living life, one of which is that we not covet what is another's: surely they would grow gentle, and, made mild, would understand that those precepts for signifying life too, against which their offense barks, were fitting to be observed at that time. But how do we covet the Old Testament as though it were another's, when we read the things that happened to them in figure, but were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11)? I think that he does not covet what is another's, who reads what was written for his own sake.

1. Faustus said: Do you accept the Apostle?

Indeed, above all.

Why, then, do you not believe that the Son of God was born of the seed of David according to the flesh (See Rom 1:3)?

I would not indeed believe that the Apostle of God could have written things contrary to himself, and held now this, now that opinion about our Lord. But since it so pleases you, who never hear without indignation that anything in the Apostle has been peddled, know that not even this is contrary to us.

Indeed, this would seem to be the old and ancient opinion of Paul about Jesus, when he too thought him, like the rest, the son of David: which, however, when he learned it was false, he interpolates and weakens, and writing to the Corinthians, he says: We know no one according to the flesh; and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him. Wherefore you ought to consider how great a difference there is between these two passages, of which one declares Jesus to be the son of David according to the flesh, while the other declares that he now knows no one according to the flesh. If both of these are Paul's, either they will be so for the reason I have said, or one of them will not be Paul's.

He goes on, finally: Therefore, he says, if there is in Christ a new creature, the old things have passed away: behold, all things are made new (2 Cor 5:16-17). You see, then, that he calls that former faith old and transitory—that is, to have believed Jesus to be of the seed of David according to the flesh; but this second and abiding one new, by which he now knows no one according to the flesh. Therefore elsewhere too: When I was a child, he says, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away the things of a child (1 Cor 13:11). And if this is so, what then do we do that is unworthy, if, holding Paul's new and better confession, we cast off that old and worse one? Or if it is dear to your heart to believe according to what he writes to the Romans, why is it not lawful for us to teach as a doctrine according to what he writes to the Corinthians? Although I have answered even this to your hardness in this way. Otherwise, far be it that the Apostle of God should ever destroy what he built, lest he set himself up as a transgressor, as he testified (See Gal 2:18). But yet, if that former opinion too is his, it has now been corrected; but if it is not right that Paul ever said anything uncorrected, then it is not his.

2. Augustine replied: This is what I said a little earlier: that where these men are so choked by manifest truth that, besieged by the clear words of the holy Scriptures, they can find no exit for their deceit in them, they answer that the testimony which was brought forward is false. O voice fugitive from truth, stubborn in madness! So far unconquerable are the things brought against you from the divine books, that there is nothing else for you to say, except that they have been falsified. What authority of writings can now be opened, what sacred book unrolled, what document of any scripture set forth to convict your errors, if this voice is admitted, if it is reckoned of any weight? It is one thing not to accept the books themselves, and to be held by no bond of them—as the pagans do with all our books, as the Jews do with the New Testament, as, finally, we ourselves do with yours and those of other heretics, if they have any of their own and proper to them, or with those that are called apocryphal: not because they are to be held in some secret authority, but because, declared by no light of testimony, they have been brought forth from some secret or other, by the presumption of who knows whom:

it is one thing, then, not to be held by the authority of certain books or men, and another to say: This man indeed, a holy man, wrote all true things, and this epistle is his, but in that very epistle this is his, this is not his. Where, when you hear from the other side: Prove it; you do not take refuge in the more truthful copies, or the greater number of manuscripts, or the older ones, or the preceding language from which this was translated into another language; but you say: I prove that this is his and that is not, on the ground that this sounds for me, that against me.

Are you, then, the rule of truth? Whatever is against you, is it not true? What if another, with similar insanity, but yet one by which your hardness may be shattered, should arise and say: On the contrary, that which sounds for you is false; but this which is against you is true? What will you do, unless perhaps you are going to bring forth another book, where whatever you read can be understood according to your own opinion? If you do this, you will hear one contradicting and crying out, not about some particular part of it, but about the whole: It is false. What will you do? Where will you turn? What origin of the book you bring forth, what antiquity, what series of succession will you cite as witness? For if you try to do this, you will avail nothing: and you see in this matter what the authority of the Catholic Church avails, which is confirmed from the most firmly founded sees of the Apostles down to the present day by the series of bishops succeeding one another, and by the consent of so many peoples.

And so, if a question were raised about the trustworthiness of the copies, as in some few varieties of readings, well known to those zealous for the sacred writings, our doubt would be settled either from the manuscripts of other regions, whence the very teaching came over, or, if the manuscripts there too varied, the more would be preferred to the fewer, or the older to the more recent; and if the variety were still uncertain, the preceding language, from which it was translated, would be consulted. In this way those inquire who wish to find what disturbs them in the holy Scriptures, confirmed by so great authority, so that they may have whence to be instructed, not whence to quarrel.

3. But this, which is brought forth against your impiety from the Epistle of the apostle Paul—that the Son of God is of the seed of David according to the flesh (See Rom 1:3)—all the manuscripts, both new and old, have, all the Churches read, all the languages agree on. Strip off, then, the cloak of deceit, clothed in which Faustus, when he had set himself, as it were, asking and saying, "Do you accept the apostle Paul?" replied, "Indeed, above all." For why did he not rather reply, "Indeed, not at all"; except that, being deceitful, he could not answer anything other than what was false? For what does he accept of the apostle Paul? Not the first man, whom Paul calls of the earth, earthy; of whom he likewise says: The first man Adam was made into a living soul (1 Cor 15:45; Gen 2:7). But that other announces some first man or other, neither of the earth, earthy, nor made into a living soul, but of the substance of God, existing as the very thing that God is, who sank his own members, or his garments, or his arms, that is, the five elements—when these too were nothing other than the substance of God—into the race of darkness, that they might, defiled, be captured. Not the second man, whom Paul calls from heaven (See 1 Cor 15:47), whom he also calls the last Adam made into a life-giving spirit (See 1 Cor 15:45), whom he calls made of the seed of David according to the flesh, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law (See Gal 4:4-5); of whom he says to Timothy: Remember that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel (2 Tim 2:8); in whose example he also preaches our resurrection, saying: For I delivered to you first of all what I also received: that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3-4); and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures. And a little later he brings in why he said this: But if Christ is preached as risen from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? (1 Cor 15:12)

But this man, who, asked whether he accepts the apostle Paul, replies, "Indeed, above all," denies all these things: he refuses to accept either that Jesus is of the seed of David, or that he was made of a woman—whom Paul calls a "woman," not because she was corrupted by intercourse or childbearing, but speaking after the manner of the Scriptures, which were accustomed to call the sex itself by that word: as in Genesis it is written of Eve: He formed her into a woman (Gen 2:22), when she had not been mixed with a man. Nor does he accept the very death of Christ, and his burial, and his resurrection; since he says that Christ neither had a mortal body, in which that death would be true, nor that those scars were true, which he showed to the disciples after the resurrection, when he appeared alive to them, which Paul also recalls (See Luke 24:39-40; 1 Cor 15:5):

nor that this very flesh of ours will rise, changed into a spiritual body, as the same Apostle says most plainly: It is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body. Hence, distinguishing between the natural body and the spiritual, he wove in what I have already recalled about the first Adam and the last Adam.

Then he brought in: But this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God.

And lest anyone should believe that the very form of the flesh, and its very substance, cannot rise, wishing to express what he had now called flesh and blood—since he wished corruption itself to be understood, which then, in the resurrection of the righteous, will not be—he at once wove in: Nor will corruption possess incorruption (1 Cor 15:44-51). And lest anyone should still think that not that which was buried will rise, but that, as it were, one tunic is laid aside and another better one is received, wishing to declare most plainly that this very thing will be changed for the better—just as Christ's garments on the mountain were not laid aside and others taken up, but the very ones that had been there were glorified into something better (See Matt 17:2)—he goes on and weaves in, saying: Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed. And lest it should still be uncertain who they are who will be changed: In a moment, he says, 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 (1 Cor 15:51-52).

Still perhaps they may say that we are changed in the resurrection not according to this mortal and corruptible body, but according to the soul: although the Apostle did not propose this as the thing he was speaking of, but spoke of the body from the very beginning of his question, as his proposition itself shows: But someone will say, he says, How do the dead rise? And with what body do they come? Here now, consequently, he points out, as if with a finger, what he was speaking of, and adds, saying: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53).

Since, then, this man denies these things, and since he preaches that very God to be corruptible, of whom Paul says: To the immortal, incorruptible, only God be honor and glory, Amen (1 Tim 1:17)—since he dreams that detestable and abominable fable of theirs, that God's substance and nature both feared utterly to be corrupted by the race of darkness, and, that provision might be made for the rest, was in part corrupted—what is it that he tries in this too to deceive the unskilled, and those less learned in the divine Scriptures, so that, asked whether he accepts the apostle Paul, he replies, "Above all," and is found to accept him not at all?

4. But there is, he says, a sure reasoning by which I will show that the apostle Paul either, by progressing, changed his opinion, and, writing to the Corinthians, corrected what he had written to the Romans; or did not write at all what is brought forward as his—that the Son of God is of the seed of David according to the flesh. By what reasoning, after all, does he show this? Because, he says, both cannot be true: both what is in the Epistle to the Romans, Concerning his Son, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:3); and what he says to the Corinthians, Therefore from now on we know no one according to the flesh; and even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him (2 Cor 5:16). It remains, then, for us to show how both can be true, and how these two are not contrary to each other. For that one of them is not Paul's we can in no way say, since no authority of the manuscripts varies in it. For although in certain Latin copies one reads not "was made," but "was born of the seed of David"—when the Greek has "was made," whence the Latin translator wished to render not word for word, but according to the sense, by saying "born"—yet that Christ is of the seed of David according to the flesh, the authority of all books and languages agrees on. But that Paul ever erred in this, and by progressing changed his opinion, far be it that we should say. Faustus himself perceived how shamelessly and impiously this would be said; and he preferred to say that Paul's Epistle had been corrupted by the falsification of others, rather than vitiated by his own error.

5. For of these books it can be said that they have something not in accord, perhaps, with a more hidden truth that is more difficult to discern—something that has either remained so, or has been corrected in later writings: these books which are written by us not with the authority of commanding, but with the exercise of progressing. For we are among those to whom the same Apostle says: And if you savor anything otherwise, this too God will reveal to you (Phil 3:15). This kind of writing is to be read not with the necessity of believing, but with the liberty of judging. Yet, lest the place for it be closed off, and the most wholesome labor of tongue and pen for handling and turning over difficult questions be taken from those who come after,

there is distinguished, from the books of later writers, the excellence of the canonical authority of the Old and New Testament, which, confirmed in the times of the Apostles, has, through the successions of bishops and the propagations of the Churches, been established loftily as on a kind of throne, which every faithful and pious understanding ought to serve. There, if anything strikes one as absurd, it is not lawful to say: The author of this book did not hold to the truth; but: Either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator erred, or you do not understand. But in the works of later writers, which are contained in innumerable books, but are in no way to be equated with that most sacred excellence of the canonical Scriptures—even where the same truth is found in any of them, the authority is nonetheless far unequal.

And so in these, if perhaps some things are thought to be discordant with the truth, because they are not understood as they were said, the reader or hearer nonetheless has there a free judgment, by which he may either approve what has pleased him, or disapprove what has offended him: and therefore all things of this kind, unless they are defended either by sure reason or by that canonical authority, so that it may be shown either that the thing argued or narrated there is so altogether, or could have been so—if anyone is displeased by it, or is unwilling to believe it, he is not reproved.

But in that canonical eminence of the sacred writings, even if one prophet, or apostle, or evangelist is declared, by the very confirmation of the canon, to have set something in his writings, it is not lawful to doubt that it is true: otherwise there will be no page by which the weakness of human ignorance may be governed, if the most wholesome authority of the canonical books is either utterly abolished by being despised, or thrown into confusion by being made unbounded.

6. Therefore, whoever you are who have been disturbed by these things as though they were contradictory—that it is written in one place, The Son of God of the seed of David (Rom 1:3), and in another, And even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him (2 Cor 5:16)—even if both were not brought forth from the writings of one Apostle, but one of them had been said by Paul, the other by Peter, or Isaiah, or any other of the Apostles or Prophets: since all things so agree with one another in canonical authority that, as though said with one mouth, they are believed with the most just and most prudent piety, and found with the most serene understanding, and demonstrated with the most skillful diligence,

it would not be lawful to doubt about either. Accordingly, since both are brought forth from the canonical Epistles of the apostle Paul, that is, the truly Pauline Epistles, and we cannot say either that the manuscript is faulty—for all the corrected Latin copies have it thus—or that the translator erred—for all the corrected Greek copies have it thus—it remains that you do not understand, but that the reasoning be demanded of me, how neither is discordant with the other, but both agree in the same rule of sound faith. For if you too inquired piously, you could find how these things, once searched out, become clear.

7. For that the Son of God was made man of the seed of David, the same Apostle says in more than one place, and the other holy Scriptures preach most plainly. But as for what he says, And even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him (2 Cor 5:16), the very circumstance of the Scriptural passage shows sufficiently what the Apostle is saying. For after his manner he meditates on our future life—which is already completed in the very man, the mediator Christ Jesus, our head, in his rising—as though it were already present, and held as present: which life surely will not be according to the flesh, just as Christ's life is now not according to the flesh. For by "flesh" in this passage he wishes to be understood, not the very substance of our body, which the Lord even after his resurrection calls flesh, saying: Handle and see, for a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see me to have (Luke 24:39), but the corruption and mortality of the flesh, which then will not be in us, just as it is now not in Christ. For he properly named this "flesh," even when he was speaking quite evidently of the resurrection itself, and said, what I have already recalled above: Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption. When, therefore, that shall have come to pass which he says consequently there: Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, that is, 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: for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor 15:50-53): then, in respect of that which he calls "flesh"—not the very substance of the body, but the very corruption of mortality—it will surely not be flesh, because, changed, it will not have the corruption of mortality; but in respect of the origin of its very substance and body it will be the same flesh, because that very flesh will rise and that very flesh will be changed,

because that too is true which the Lord said after he rose: Handle and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me to have; and this is true which the Apostle says: Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God. For the former was said in respect of the very substance, which will exist even then, because it itself will be changed; but the latter was said in respect of the carnal quality of corruption, which then will no longer be, because the flesh, once changed, will not be corrupted. We had known Christ, then, according to the flesh, that is, according to the mortality of the flesh, before he rose: but now we no longer know him; because, as the same Apostle says: Christ, rising from the dead, dies now no more, and death will no longer have dominion over him (Rom 6:9).

7. For if you hold yourself to the strict propriety of words, he lied when he said: We had known Christ according to the flesh, if Christ was never according to the flesh: for no one had known what did not exist. But he did not say: We had supposed Christ to be according to the flesh; but: We had known. Yet, not to press the word, lest anyone affirm that the Apostle spoke by a figure of speech, so that for "we had supposed" he said "we had known," I wonder that blind men do not attend to this—or rather I do not wonder that the blind do not see—that if Christ therefore had no flesh, because the Apostle said that he now no longer knows Christ according to the flesh, then neither did those have flesh of whom in the same passage he says: Therefore from now on we know no one according to the flesh (2 Cor 5:16).

For if he wished this to be understood of Christ alone, he could not say: We know no one according to the flesh; but because he was meditating on the future life, as though present, of those who will be changed when they rise together with himself, he says: From now on we know no one according to the flesh; that is, we hold so sure a hope of our future incorruption and immortality that from now on we already rejoice in that very knowledge. Hence in another place he says: But if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; savor the things that are above, not the things that are on earth (Col 3:1-2). Surely we have not yet risen as Christ has; but yet, according to the hope which is ours in him, he testified that we have already risen with him. Hence he also says: According to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5). But who would not understand that in the washing of regeneration the hope of future salvation was given us, not now the salvation itself, which is promised? And yet, because it is a sure hope, as though that same salvation had already been given, he says, he saved us.

For in another place he says most lucidly: We ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:23ff). Therefore, just as here he did not say: We shall be saved; but: From now on we have already been saved—not yet in fact, however, but in hope: For in hope, he says, we have been saved—so too what was said there: From now on we know no one according to the flesh, is understood not yet in fact, but in hope: because our hope is in Christ, because in him there is already completed what we hope is promised to us. For he has already risen, and death will no longer have dominion over him. And even if we had known him according to the flesh, when he was still to die—for there was in his body that mortality which the Apostle properly calls "flesh"—yet now we no longer know him; for that mortal part of him has already put on immortality, so that according to his former mortality he can no longer be called flesh.

8. And so let us consider the context of the very passage where this sentence is, about which these men raise their slander, so that what I say may shine forth more. The love of Christ, he says, constrains us; judging this, that if one died for all, then all died: and he died for all, that those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them. Therefore from now on we know no one according to the flesh; and even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him. Surely now it is apparent to anyone that the Apostle said this on account of the resurrection of Christ; since these words were preceded by that: That those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them. For what else is it, to live not for themselves but for him, than to live not according to the flesh in the hope of earthly and corruptible goods, but according to the spirit in the hope of the resurrection, which has already taken place from among them in Christ? And so of those for whom Christ died and rose again, and who now live not for themselves but for him, the Apostle knew no one according to the flesh, on account of the hope of future immortality, in the expectation of which they were living,

which in Christ was now not hope but fact: and even if he had known him according to the flesh, when he was still to die, yet now he no longer knew him; because he knew that he had risen, and that death would no longer have dominion over him. And because we all are this in him, even if not yet in fact, yet now in hope, he goes on and says: If, then, there is in Christ any new creature, the old things have passed away: behold, all things are made new. But all things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ (2 Cor 5:14ff).

Every new creature, then, that is, the people renewed through faith, that it may have for the time in hope what afterward is to be completed in fact, has already in Christ what it hopes for in itself. And so now the old things have passed away according to hope, because it is now no longer the time of the Old Testament, in which a temporal and carnal kingdom is awaited from God; and all things are made new according to that same hope, that we may hold the promised kingdom of heaven, where there will be no death and no corruption.

But in the resurrection of the dead, now not according to hope but according to fact, both the old things will pass away, when the last enemy, death, is destroyed; and all things will be made new, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality (1 Cor 15:26, 53): which has already taken place in Christ, whom, according to fact, Paul now no longer knew according to the flesh; but of those for whom he died and rose again, not yet according to fact, but according to hope, he knew no one according to the flesh; because by his grace, as the same Apostle says to the Ephesians, we have been saved.

For the passage itself bears witness to this sentence: But God, he says, who is rich in mercy, on account of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved (Eph 2:4-5). For what he said here, made us alive together with Christ, this he said to the Corinthians: That those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them. And what he says here, By whose grace we have been saved, he speaks of as already perfected, which he holds in hope. For, as I recalled a little earlier, he says most plainly elsewhere: For in hope we have been saved. And therefore here too he goes on and recounts as perfected what is to come: And he raised us up together, he says, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. For surely Christ is already seated in the heavenly places, but not yet we: but because in sure hope we already hold what is to come, he said that we sit together in the heavenly places, not yet in ourselves, but already in him. And indeed, lest you should think it is now already perfected, what is said in hope as though it were perfected, and that you may understand it is still to come, he goes on and says: That he might show in the ages to come the surpassing riches of his grace, in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:7).

Hence this too: For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which are through the Law, worked in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death (Rom 7:5). For he said thus, When we were in the flesh, as though they were now no longer in the flesh: which is understood thus—when we were in the hope of carnal things; at the time when the Law, which cannot be fulfilled except through spiritual love, was over them to this end, that through transgression the offense might abound; so that afterward, with the New Testament revealed, through indulgence, grace might superabound (See Rom 5:20).

Hence likewise he says elsewhere: But those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And lest anyone should think that those who are not yet dead were meant, he at once added: But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit (Rom 8:8-9). That is, those who are in the hope of carnal goods cannot please God; but you are not in the hope of carnal things, but in the hope of spiritual things, that is, of the kingdom of heaven, where the body itself, through that change, will be in a certain manner of its own spiritual, which now is natural. For a natural body is sown, as he says likewise to the Corinthians, a spiritual body will rise (1 Cor 15:44).

If, then, the Apostle now no longer knew according to the flesh any of those who were said to be not in the flesh because they were not in the hope of carnal things, although they still bore corruptible and mortal flesh, how much more expressly would he say of Christ that he now no longer knew him according to the flesh, in whose body even in fact there was now completed what those men held promised in hope?

How much better, then, how much more religiously the divine Scriptures are handled, so that, all things being examined, they are found to agree, than that, when a man fails in a question he cannot solve, they should be accepted in part as true and condemned in part as false? For even though the Apostle was a child, and savored the things that were a child's (See 1 Cor 13:11)—although he said this by way of a likeness—he was nonetheless not yet spiritual, such as he already was when he wrote the things which were to be turned over, for the building up of the Churches, not in the hands of students with the exercise of progressing, but to be read in the ecclesiastical canon with the authority of commanding.

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Prophets?

Rather, you say instead, if you have anything, why we ought to accept the Prophets.

On account of the testimonies, you say, which they uttered beforehand about Christ.

I, for my part, have found none, although I have read them quite attentively and most carefully. But yet this too is the confession of an enfeebled faith—not to believe in Christ without a witness and an argument. Surely you yourselves are wont to teach that nothing is to be sought out more curiously, because Christian belief is simple and absolute. How, then, do you now destroy the simplicity of faith, by propping it up with proofs and witnesses, and that to the Jews? Or if the first position displeases you, and you therefore pass over to the other: who ought to be a more trustworthy witness to you than God himself concerning his Son, who, not through a seer, nor through an interpreter, but with a voice that of itself burst forth from heaven, said, when he sent him to the earth: This is my Son, the most beloved; believe him (Matt 3:17; Luke 9:35)?

And also he himself about himself: I proceeded from my Father, and came into this world (John 16:28); and many other things of this kind. At which the Jews, snarling, said: You testify about yourself; your testimony is not true. To whom he himself said: Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I am not alone. For in your Law too it is written: The testimony of two men is true. I am one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me (John 8:13-18): he did not say: The Prophets. To this he also calls his very works as testimony for himself: If you do not believe me, he says, believe the works (John 10:38). He did not say: If you do not believe me, believe the Prophets.

Therefore we need no testimonies about our Savior: we seek in the Prophets only examples of an honorable life, and prudence and virtue—none of which, I perceive, was in the Jewish seers, since it has not escaped you; for when I asked you why you thought they were to be accepted, you did not unwarily or discourteously pass over their works in silence, leaping only to their predictions; forgetting, of course, that it is written that a grape is never gathered from thorns, nor a fig from thistles (See Matt 7:16). Therefore let me reply to your question, briefly and soberly for the time, by which you ask why we do not accept the Prophets. For the rest, that they prophesied nothing about Christ has already been amply shown in the books of our parents. But I will add this: that if the Hebrew seers, knowing and preaching Christ, lived so disgracefully, it can rightly be said of them too what Paul testifies of the wise of the Gentiles: That when they had known God, they did not glorify him as God, or give thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom 1:21). You see, then, that it is no great thing to have known great things, unless you have lived according to their dignity.

2. Augustine replied: By all these words Faustus is at pains to make us believe that the Hebrew Prophets neither foretold anything about Christ, nor, if they did foretell it, that their testimonies profit us, nor that those men themselves lived according to the dignity of those same testimonies. We, then, will demonstrate both their predictions about Christ, and how much provision has been made for us through them for the truth and firmness of faith, and that they lived fittingly and aptly in accordance with their prophecy. In this threefold disputation, what I set first it would be long to prove by bringing forward testimonies from all those books, by which I might show that Christ was foretold: but I will crush this man's frivolity with the weightiest weight of authority.

For he so does not accept the Hebrew prophets that he nonetheless professes that he accepts the Apostles. Let us hear, then, what the apostle Paul—about whom, when he had asked himself as though with an opposing voice whether he accepted him, he replied, "Indeed, above all" (See Rom 1:3)—says about their prophecy. Paul, he says, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his Prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:1-3). What more does he want? Unless perhaps he wishes this to be understood as said about some other prophets, not about our Hebrews? But although it were said through whatever prophets you please, yet about that Son of God the Gospel was promised, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh; into which Gospel the Apostle says he was set apart: and let this be contrary to the faithlessness of these men, that according to this Gospel we believe the Son of God was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; let them yet recognize more open things, in which the most evident testimony is borne to the Hebrew prophets through that Apostle, by whose authority the necks of these proud men may be broken.

3. I speak the truth in Christ, he says, I do not lie, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that there is to me great sorrow and continual grief to my heart. For I myself wished to be accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the worship, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom 9:1-5).

What can be said more abundantly, what declared more expressly, what commended more holily? For what is the adoption of the Israelites, except through the Son of God? Hence he says to the Galatians: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal 4:4-5). And what is their glory, except especially that of which the same Paul says to the same Romans: What advantage, then, has the Jew? Or what profit is there in circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed, because to them were entrusted the oracles of God (Rom 3:1-2)?

Let these men seek what are the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews, and show us others besides those of the Hebrew Prophets. And now, why did he say that the covenants pertain especially to the Israelites, except because both the Old Testament was given to them, and the New was figured in the Old? But the giving of the Law, which was given to the Israelites—not understanding its dispensation, because God now does not want us to be under the Law, but under grace—these men are wont to reproach with furious lack of skill.

Let them yield, then, to the apostolic authority, which, praising and commending the excellence of the Israelites, counted this too among it, that theirs is the giving of the Law. If it were evil, it surely would not be set among their praises. But if it did not preach Christ, the Lord himself would not say: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote about me (John 5:46); nor would he bear witness to it thus after the resurrection, saying: It was necessary that all things be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms about me (Luke 24:44).

4. But because the Manicheans preach another Christ, not the one whom the Apostles preached, but their own deceitful one deceitfully, the followers of whose falsehood themselves lie fittingly—except that they impudently want to be believed, when they profess themselves the disciples of a liar—there has befallen them what the Apostle says of the very unbelieving Jews: When Moses is read, a veil is over their heart; for this veil, through which they do not understand Moses, is not taken away unless they pass over to Christ: not such as they themselves have fashioned, but such as the Hebrew Fathers prophesied. For the same Apostle says thus: But when you pass over to the Lord, the veil will be taken away (2 Cor 3:15-16).

For it is no wonder that these men refuse to believe Christ, who rose and said: It was necessary that all things be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms about me: since Christ himself narrated what Abraham said to a certain merciless rich man, when he was tormented in the underworld and asked that someone be sent from there to his brothers, by whom they might be taught not to come, themselves too, into that place of torments. For this was said to him: They have there Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them. And when he had said that they would not believe unless someone rose from the dead, it was most truly answered: If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead (Luke 16:27-31). Therefore these men, not hearing Moses and the Prophets, do not believe—not only in Christ rising from the dead, but that Christ rose from the dead at all. For how do they believe him to have risen, whom they do not believe to have died? For how do they believe him to have died, whom they do not believe to have had a mortal body?

5. But we do not believe them, the deceitful preachers, not of that Christ who was deceitful, but of one who did not exist at all. For we have a true and truthful Christ, foretold by the Prophets, preached by the Apostles, who adduce the testimonies of their preaching from the Law and the Prophets, as they show in innumerable places. This Paul embraced most briefly and most truly, saying: But now, without the Law, the righteousness of God has been made manifest, witnessed by the Law and the Prophets (Rom 3:21). What Prophets, except the Israelites, whose he said most plainly were both the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the promises (Rom 9:4)? The promises about whom, except about Christ? Which he briefly defines in another place, when he speaks of Christ, saying: For as many as are the promises of God, in him they are yea (2 Cor 1:20). Paul tells me that the giving of the Law is the Israelites'. He also says: For Christ is the end of the Law, unto righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom 10:4). He also says, speaking of Christ: For as many as are the promises of God, in him they are yea: and you tell me that the Israelite Prophets foretold nothing about Christ! What, then, remains, except that I choose whether I should believe Mani, telling a vain and long fable against Paul; or Paul, forewarning: If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed (Gal 1:8-9)?

6. Here perhaps they may say: Show us where Christ was foretold by the Israelite Prophets. As though that authority were a small thing, by which the Apostles say that the things we read in the writings of the Hebrew Prophets were completed in Christ; or that which the Lord himself says, that those things were written about him. Accordingly, whoever cannot show this does not himself understand: it is not the Apostles or Christ or the sacred manuscripts that lie. But yet, not to gather many things, and to recall this one—what the Apostle says consequently in the same passage: But the word of God cannot fail. For not all who are of Israel are Israelites; nor are all sons who are the seed of Abraham; but: In Isaac shall your seed be called: that is, not those who are the sons of the flesh, these are the sons of God; but the sons of the promise are counted as the seed (Rom 9:6-8).

What will they answer to this, when it is plainly said about this seed to Abraham in another place: In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (Gen 26:4)? For if we were arguing this at the time when the Apostle was expounding it, saying: To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed: he does not say, And to seeds, as in many; but as in one: And to your seed, which is Christ (Gal 3:16), perhaps someone would not so impudently be unwilling to believe this, before he saw all the nations believing in Christ, who is preached as of the seed of Abraham. But now, when we see this being fulfilled, which we read foretold so long before, when all the nations are now being blessed in the seed of Abraham, to whom it was said thousands of years ago: In your seed shall all the nations be blessed: who would so stubbornly be insane as either to try to bring in another Christ, who is not of the seed of Abraham; or to think that the Hebrew Prophecies foretold nothing about this true Christ, of whose nation Abraham is the father?

7. But who can recount—I do not say in one brief reply, such as we are constrained to have in this work, but in any vast volume whatever—all the proclamations of the Hebrew Prophets about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? Since all things that are contained in those books were either said about him or on account of him. But for the exercise of the seeker and the delight of the finder, far more things there are insinuated through allegories and riddles, partly conveyed by words alone, partly even narrated as deeds. Yet unless some things there were manifest, there could not be grasped the sense by which even the obscure things grow clear. And yet, even from those things which are wrapped in figures, if some are set down as though woven together under one view, they so join their voices in bearing witness to Christ that the deafness of any dull man would blush.

8. In Genesis God completed all his works in six days, and rested on the seventh (See Gen 2:1-2). The works of God mark the human race in this world by six ages through the successions of times: of which the first is from Adam to Noah; the second, from Noah to Abraham; the third, from Abraham to David; the fourth, from David to the migration into Babylon; the fifth, from there to the humble coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; the sixth, which is now being passed, until the Most High comes to judgment; but the seventh is understood in the rest of the saints, not in this life, but in another, where the rich man saw the poor man resting, when he was tormented in the underworld (See Luke 16:23); where no evening comes, because there is no failing of things there.

On the sixth day in Genesis man is formed to the image of God (See Gen 1:27): in the sixth age of the world our reformation is made manifest in the newness of the mind, according to the image of him who created us, as the Apostle says (See Col 3:10). A spouse is made for the sleeping man from his side (See Gen 2:22): the Church is made for the dying Christ from the mystery of the blood that flowed from the side of the dead one (See John 19:34). She who was made from the side of her husband is called Eve, life and mother of the living: and the Lord says in the Gospel: If anyone does not eat my flesh and drink my blood, he will not have life in himself (John 6:53).

And all the things that are read there, handled in detail and minutely, speak beforehand of Christ and the Church, whether in good Christians or in bad. For it was not in vain that the Apostle said: Adam, who is a figure of him who was to come (Rom 5:14); and that: A man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and the two shall be in one flesh. This, he says, is a great mystery; but I speak in Christ and in the Church (Eph 5:31-32). For who would not recognize that Christ in this way left his Father, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-7): that he also left his mother, the synagogue of the Jews, clinging carnally to the Old Testament, and cleaved to his wife, the holy Church, that in the peace of the New Testament the two might be in one flesh? Because, though he is God with the Father, through whom we were made, he became, through the flesh, a partaker of us, that we might be able to be the body of that head.

9. Just as Cain's sacrifice from the fruits of the earth is rejected, while Abel's sacrifice from sheep and their fat is accepted; so the faith of the New Testament, praising God out of the innocence of grace, is preferred to the earthly works of the Old Testament: because, even though the Jews formerly did those things rightly, yet in this they are guilty of faithlessness, that, with Christ coming, they did not distinguish the time of the New Testament from the time of the Old. For God said to Cain: If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, you have sinned. If he had obeyed God, who said: Be still; for its turning is to you, and you shall have dominion over it, he would have turned his sin toward himself, attributing it to himself, and confessing to God; and so, helped by the grace of indulgence, he himself would have had dominion over his sin; and not, with sin having dominion over him, a slave of sin, would he have killed his innocent brother (See Gen 4:3-8).

So too the Jews, in whom these things were carried on as a figure, if they had been still from their disturbance, and, recognizing the time of salvation through grace unto the forgiveness of sins, had heard Christ saying: The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are ill: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matt 9:12-13), and: Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin; and: If the Son frees you, then you will be truly free (John 8:34, 36): they would have turned their sin toward themselves in confession, as it is written in the Psalm, saying to the physician: I said: Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you (Ps 41:4 (40:5)); and they would, as free men through the hope of grace, have had dominion over that same sin, as long as it was still in their mortal body. But now, ignorant of God's righteousness, and wishing to establish their own (See Rom 10:3), lifted up by the works of the Law, not humbled over their sins, they were not still: and with sin reigning in their mortal body so as to obey its desires (See Rom 6:12), they stumbled on the stone of stumbling (See Rom 9:32), and blazed up with hatred against him,

whose works, seeing them accepted by God, they grieved over, while the man born blind who now saw said to them: We know that God does not hear sinners; but whoever worships him, and does his will, him he hears (John 9:31): as though he said this to them: He does not look upon the sacrifice of Cain, but he looks upon the sacrifice of Abel. And so Abel, the younger born, is killed by his elder brother: Christ, the head of the younger people, is killed by the Jewish people, the elder born: the one in the field, the other in the place of Calvary.

10. God asks Cain where his brother is—not as one ignorant who learns from him, but as a judge who punishes the guilty. He replies that he does not know, and that he is not his keeper. To this very day, what do the Jews answer us, when we question them with the voice of God, that is, with the voice of the holy Scriptures, about Christ, except that they do not know the Christ whom we name? For the ignorance of Cain is deceitful; the denial of the Jews is false. But they would in a manner be the keepers of Christ, if they had been willing to accept and keep the Christian faith. For he who keeps Christ in his heart does not say what Cain said: Am I my brother's keeper? God says to Cain: What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth (Gen 4:9-10). Thus the divine voice in the holy Scriptures accuses the Jews. For the blood of Christ has a great voice on the earth, when, received from all the nations, the answer is: Amen. This is the clear voice of the blood, which the blood itself expresses from the mouth of the faithful redeemed by that same blood.

11. God says to Cain: And now you are accursed from the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand; for you shall work the earth, and it will not add its strength to give to you: groaning and trembling shall you be on the earth (Gen 4:11-12). He did not say: Accursed is the earth; but: Accursed are you from the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. For the faithless Jewish people is accursed from the earth, that is, from the Church, which opened its mouth in the confession of sins to receive the blood of Christ, which was poured out for the forgiveness of sins, from the hand of the persecutor unwilling to be under grace, but under the Law; so that he might be accursed from the Church, that is, that the Church might understand and show him to be accursed, since the Apostle says: For whoever are of the works of the Law are under the curse of the Law (Gal 3:10).

Then, when he had said: Accursed are you from the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand, he did not say: For you shall work it; but he said: For you shall work the earth, and it will not add its strength to give to you. Hence it is not necessary to understand that Cain works the same earth which opened its mouth to receive his brother's blood from his hand: but he is understood to be accursed from this earth on this account, that he works an earth which will not add its strength to give to him; that is, the Church recognizes and shows the Jewish people to be accursed on this account, that, with Christ slain, it still works earthly circumcision, earthly sabbath, earthly unleavened bread, earthly Passover:

all of which earthly working has a hidden strength of understanding the grace of Christ, which is not given to the Jews persevering in impiety and faithlessness, because it has been revealed in the New Testament; and to those who do not pass over to the Lord the veil is not taken away, which remains in the reading of the Old Testament, because in Christ alone there is done away—not the reading of the Old Testament itself, which has a hidden strength, but the veil by which it is hidden (See 2 Cor 3:14-16). Hence, when Christ suffered on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn (See Matt 27:51), so that through Christ's passion the secrets of the mysteries might be revealed to the faithful, passing over to drink his blood with mouth opened in confession.

For this reason that people, like Cain, still works the earth, still carries on the working of the Law carnally, which does not give it its strength, because it does not understand in it the grace of Christ. For this reason, too, in the very earth which Christ bore, that is, in his flesh, they themselves worked out our salvation by crucifying Christ, who died for our sins. And that same earth did not give them its strength, because they were not justified by the strength of the resurrection of him who rose for our justification (See Rom 4:25): because, even though he was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives by the power of God, as the Apostle says (2 Cor 13:4). This, then, is the strength of that earth, which it does not show to the impious and unbelieving. Hence not even when rising did he appear to those by whom he had been crucified; like Cain working the earth, that the grain might be sown, that same earth not showing him the fruit of its strength: For you shall work the earth, he says, and it will not add its strength to give to you.

12. Groaning and trembling shall you be on the earth. Now, behold, who does not see, who does not recognize, throughout the whole earth, wherever that people is scattered, how it groans with grief over its lost kingdom, and trembles with fear under innumerable Christian peoples? And so Cain answered and said: My case is greater, if you cast me out today from the face of the earth, and I am hidden from your face, and I shall be groaning and trembling on the earth; and it will come to pass that everyone who finds me will kill me.

Truly from this he groans and trembles, lest, his earthly kingdom now also lost, he be killed by that visible death. This he calls the greater case—greater than that the earth does not give him its strength—lest he die spiritually. For he savors carnally, and does not think it grievous to be hidden from the face of God, that is, to have God angry, except lest he be found and killed. He savors carnally, like one working the earth, whose strength he does not receive. But to savor according to the flesh is death (Rom 8:6). Not understanding this, he groans over his lost kingdom, and trembles at bodily death.

But what does God answer him? Not so, he says; but everyone who kills Cain will pay seven penalties (Gen 4:12-15): that is, not so as you say; the impious race of carnal Jews will not perish by bodily death. For whoever destroys them in that way will pay seven penalties; that is, will take away from them the seven penalties by which they are bound on account of the guilt of having killed Christ: so that throughout all this time which revolves in the sevenfold number of days—since the Jewish nation does not perish—it may appear sufficiently to the faithful Christians what subjection they have deserved who with proud kingdom killed the Lord.

13. And the Lord God set a mark on Cain, that no one who finds him should kill him (Gen 4:13-15). This indeed is very marvelous: how all the nations which were subjugated by the Romans passed over into the rite of the Roman sacred things, and undertook to observe and celebrate those sacrileges; but the Jewish nation, whether under pagan kings or under Christian ones, has not lost the mark of its Law, by which it is distinguished from the other nations and peoples; and every emperor or king who finds them in his realm finds them with that very mark, and does not kill them; that is, does not bring it about that they are not Jews, marked off from the fellowship of the other nations by a certain definite and proper sign of their observance: except whoever of them passes over to Christ, so that he is no longer found a Cain, nor goes out from the face of God, nor dwells in the land of Nod, which is said to be interpreted "Commotion."

Against which evil, God is asked in the Psalm: Do not give my feet to commotion (Ps 66:9 (65:9)); and: Let not the hands of sinners move me (Ps 36:11 (35:12)); and: Those who trouble me will exult, if I am moved (Ps 13:4 (12:5)); and: The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be moved (Ps 16:8 (15:8)); and innumerable such things: which all suffer who go out from the face of God, that is, from the mercy of his love. Hence it is said in a certain psalm: I said in my abundance: I shall not be moved forever. But see what follows: Lord, in your will you gave strength to my beauty; but you turned away your face, and I became troubled (Ps 30:6-7 (29:7-8)). From which it is understood that every soul is beautiful, and comely, and strong in virtue, by participation in the light of God, not through itself. If these Manicheans too considered and understood this, they would not fall into so great a blasphemy, thinking themselves to be the nature and substance of God. But they cannot, because they are not still; for they do not understand the sabbath of the heart: for if they were still, as was said to Cain, they would turn their sin toward themselves, that is, attribute it to themselves, not to some race of darkness or other; and so, through the grace of God, they would have dominion over that same sin. But as it is, both they and all who, obstinate in various errors, by resisting the truth go out from the face of God, like Cain, like the lost Jews, dwell in the land of commotion, that is, in carnal disturbance, over against the delight of God, that is, over against Eden (Gen 4:16), which is interpreted "Feasting," where paradise was planted. Now I will touch briefly on the few remaining things out of many, lest I impede the purpose of this work and my reply by too great a length of discourse.

14. For whom would these books not move to seek and understand Christ—to pass over those things which, although they are contemplated all the more sweetly the more they are drawn out from more hidden places, yet require length of discussion, because they need many corroborations: to pass over such things, then—whom would these not move to wholesome faith: that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, pleased God and was translated (See Gen 5:24); and a seventh rest is foretold, to which everyone is translated who is formed, as on the sixth day in the sixth age of the world, by Christ's coming? That Noah is freed with his household through water and wood (See Gen 7:23); just as the family of Christ is marked through the Baptism of the passion of the cross. That the same ark is built of squared timbers; just as the Church is constructed of saints, always ready for every good work (See 2 Tim 2:21). For a square, whichever way you turn it, stands firmly. That its length is six times its breadth, and ten times its height, in the likeness of the human body, shows that Christ appeared in a human body. That its breadth is spread out by fifty cubits; just as the Apostle says: Our heart is enlarged (2 Cor 6:11). By what, except by spiritual love? On account of which he likewise says: The love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). For on the fiftieth day after his resurrection Christ sent the Holy Spirit, by whom he enlarged the hearts of believers (See Acts 2:1-4).

That it is three hundred cubits long, so that six times fifty are completed: just as the whole time of this world is extended through six ages, in all of which Christ never ceased to be preached—in five foretold through Prophecy, in the sixth spread abroad through the Gospel. That its height rises to thirty cubits, which number the length of three hundred cubits has ten times over: because Christ is our height, who, bearing the age of thirty years, consecrated the evangelical teaching, testifying that he had come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (See Matt 5:17). But the heart of the Law is recognized in the ten commandments: hence the length of the ark is completed by ten times thirty; hence Noah too is counted the tenth from Adam (See Gen 5; Luke 3:36-38). That the timbers of the ark are glued together with pitch within and without (Gen 6:14-15): so that in the joining of unity the endurance of love may be signified, lest, when scandals tempt the Church, whether from those who are within or from those who are without, the brotherly joining give way, and the bond of peace be loosed. For pitch is a most fervent and most violent glue, signifying the ardor of love, with great force of strength for holding the spiritual fellowship that endures all things (See 1 Cor 13:7).

15. That all kinds of animals are shut in the ark: just as the Church contains all the nations, which that dish shown to Peter also signifies. That both clean and unclean animals are there (See Acts 10:11-12): just as in the Sacraments of the Church both the good and the bad are engaged. That there are seven of the clean and two of the unclean (See Gen 7:2): not because there are fewer bad than good; but because the good keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. And the divine Scripture commends the Holy Spirit in a sevenfold operation: of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety, and of the fear of God (See Isa 11:2-3). Hence too that number of fifty days, pertaining to the coming of the Holy Spirit, is completed in seven sevens, which make forty-nine, with one added; on account of which it was said: Striving to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:3). But the bad are shown, in the number two, to be prone to schisms, and in a manner divisible. That Noah himself with his household is counted as eight: because in Christ the hope of our resurrection appeared, who on the eighth day, that is, on the first after the seventh of the sabbath, rose from the dead; which day is the third from the passion, but in the number of the days that revolve through all time it is both the eighth and the first.

16. That the ark is gathered above and finished to one cubit: just as the Church, the body of Christ, gathered into unity, is raised and perfected. Hence he says in the Gospel: He who does not gather with me scatters (Matt 12:30). That its entrance is made in the side: for no one enters into the Church except through the Sacrament of the forgiveness of sins; and this flowed from the opened side of Christ. That the lower parts of the ark are constructed with two and three chambers (See Gen 6:16): just as the Church gathers from all the nations a multitude either twofold, on account of the circumcision and the foreskin; or threefold, on account of the three sons of Noah, by whose offspring the world was filled. And these were called the lower parts of the ark for this reason, because in this earthly life there is a diversity of nations, but at the summit we are all completed into one. And this is not a variety: because Christ is all things and in all, completing us, as it were, in one cubit above, by heavenly unity.

17. That after seven days from when Noah entered the ark the flood came: because we are baptized in the hope of future rest, which was signified on the seventh day. That outside the ark all flesh which the earth sustained was consumed by the flood: because outside the fellowship of the Church the water of Baptism, although it is the same, not only avails nothing for salvation, but rather avails for destruction. That it rained for forty days and forty nights (See Gen 7:17-23): because all guilt of sins, which is committed against the ten commandments of the Law, throughout the whole world, which is contained in four parts—for ten multiplied by four make forty—whether that guilt, as pertains to the days, was contracted from the prosperity of things, or, as pertains to the nights, from the adversity of things, is washed away by the Sacrament of heavenly Baptism.

18. That Noah was five hundred years old when the Lord spoke to him to make the ark for himself, and was passing his six hundredth year when he had entered it (See Gen 5:31; 7:6)—from which it is understood that the ark was built over a hundred years—what else do these hundred years seem to signify here, except the individual ages of the world? Hence this sixth age, which is signified from the completed five hundred up to six hundred, constructs the Church in the evangelical manifestation; and therefore let him who takes thought for himself unto life be, as it were, squared timber, ready for every good work, and let him enter into the holy structure: because the second month too of the six hundredth year, in which Noah enters the ark, signifies the same sixth age. For two months are concluded in the number sixty; and from the number six are named both sixty, and six hundred, and six thousand, and sixty thousand, and six hundred thousand, and six hundred times, and whatever thereafter, in larger sums, by the same principle, the number rises into infinite increases.

19. And that the twenty-seventh day of the month is recorded: this pertains to the signification of the same squaring, which has already been set forth in the squared timbers. But here more evidently, because the trinity perfects us, ready for every good work, that is, in a manner squared: in memory, by which we recall God; in understanding, by which we know him; in will, by which we love him. For three times three, and this three times, make twenty-seven, which is the cube of the number three. That in the seventh month the ark settled, that is, rested (See Gen 8:4, 14): the signification runs back to that seventh rest. And because the perfect rest, there too the number of that squaring is repeated: for on the twenty-seventh day of the second month this Sacrament was commended; and again on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month the same commendation was confirmed, when the ark rested: for what is promised in hope is presented in fact. Further, because that very seventh rest is joined with the eighth resurrection: for the rest which receives the saints after this life is not ended when the body is restored, but rather it takes up the whole man—not now in hope, but already in fact—renewed in every part with the perfect salvation of immortality, both of spirit and of body, into the gift of eternal life:

because, then, the seventh rest is joined with the eighth resurrection; and this, in the Sacrament of our regeneration, that is, in Baptism, is a high and deep mystery. The water rose fifteen cubits, exceeding the height of the mountains (See Gen 7:20): that is, this Sacrament transcends all the wisdom of the proud. For seven and eight joined make fifteen. And because seventy is named from seven, and eighty from eight, with both numbers joined, the water was raised for one hundred and fifty days, commending and confirming to us that same height of Baptism in consecrating the new man to hold the faith of rest and resurrection.

20. That after forty days the raven sent out did not return, either intercepted by the waters or enticed by some floating corpse, signifies men most foul with the uncleanness of desire, and on this account too intent on the things that are outside in this world, who are either rebaptized or seduced and held by those whom Baptism kills outside the ark, that is, outside the Church. That the dove sent out, finding no rest, returned; shows that through the New Testament rest in this world is not promised to the saints. For it was sent out after forty days; which number signifies the life that is lived in this world. Then, sent out after seven days, on account of that sevenfold spiritual operation, it brought back a fruitful sprig of olive: by which it might signify that some, even baptized outside the Church, if the richness of love has not been lacking to them, can in a later time, as at evening, be led, in the mouth of the dove as in the kiss of peace, into the fellowship of unity. That, sent out after another seven days, it did not return (See Gen 8:6-12): this signifies the end of the world, when there will be the rest of the saints—no longer in the sacrament of hope, by which the Church is associated in this time, as long as that which flowed from the side of Christ is drunk; but now in the very perfection of eternal salvation, when the kingdom will be handed over to God the Father (See 1 Cor 15:24), so that in that clear contemplation of unchangeable truth we may need no corporeal mysteries.

21. It is too long to touch on all things, even as briefly as I have run through these: why in the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, that is, when the six hundred years were completed, the covering of the ark is opened, and the mystery that was hidden is, as it were, revealed. Why on the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth is said to have dried (See Gen 8:13-14), as though the necessity of baptizing were now ended in the fifty-seventh number of days. For it is the twenty-seventh day of the second month, which number, from that joining of spirit and body, has seven times eight, with one added on account of the bond of unity. Why those who had entered the ark separately come out joined. For it had been said thus, that Noah and his sons entered the ark, and his wife and the wives of his sons (See Gen 7:7): the men were recorded apart, the women apart. For in this time of this sacrament, the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (See Gal 5:17). But Noah and his wife, and his sons and the wives of his sons (See Gen 8:18), come out, the males and females now recorded jointly: because at the end of the world and in the resurrection of the righteous, the body will cling to the spirit with every kind of perfect peace, with no want or concupiscence of mortality resisting. Why the animals, although both clean and unclean had been in the ark, yet after the going out from the ark are offered to God in sacrifice only if clean (See Gen 8:20).

22. What, then, it means that, with God speaking to Noah and, as it were, again from the beginning—because the same things had to be signified in many ways—commending the figure of the Church, his offspring is blessed to fill the earth, and all animals are given them for food: just as in that dish it is said to Peter: Slay and eat (Acts 10:13). That they are commanded to eat with the blood cast out: lest the former life, as though suffocated, be held in the conscience, but have, as it were, an outpouring through confession. That God set a covenant between himself and men and every living soul, that he should not destroy it by a flood—the bow that appears in the clouds (See Gen 9:1-17), which never shines except from the sun: for those do not perish in the flood, separated from the Church, who in the Prophets and all the divine Scriptures, as in the clouds of God, recognize the glory of Christ, and do not seek their own. But lest the worshipers of this sun swell up the more, let them know that Christ is signified by the sun in this way, just as by a lion, by a lamb, by a stone, on account of some likeness, not by a property of substance.

23. And now that, from the vineyard he planted, Noah, drunk, was uncovered in his house (See Gen 9:20-23): to whom would Christ not appear, having suffered among his own nation? For then the mortality of his flesh was uncovered—to the Jews a scandal, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, as Shem and Japheth, the power of God and the Wisdom of God: because what is foolish of God is wiser than men, and what is weak of God is stronger than men (See 1 Cor 1:23-25).

Accordingly, in the two sons, the eldest and the youngest, two peoples are figured, carrying one garment behind their backs—namely, the sacrament of the Lord's passion now past and accomplished—who do not look upon their father's nakedness, because they do not consent to Christ's death; and yet they honor it with a covering, as those who know from whom they were born. But the middle son, that is, the people of the Jews—middle for this reason, because they neither held the primacy of the Apostles, nor believed last among the Gentiles—saw the nakedness of the father, because they consented to Christ's death; and they announced it outside to the brothers: for through him there was made manifest, and in a manner published, what was secret in the Prophecy; and therefore he becomes a servant of his brothers. For what else is that very nation even today, except a kind of book-keeper of the Christians, bearing the Law and the Prophets for the testimony of the Church's assertion, so that we may honor through the sacrament what it announces through the letter?

24. But whom would it not rouse, whom would it not either inform or confirm in faith, that those two who honored their father's nakedness, although turned away, are blessed thus, as those whom the deed of the wicked vineyard displeased? Blessed, he says, be the Lord God of Shem. For although he is the God of all nations, yet in a manner by a proper title, even now among the Gentiles themselves, he is called the God of Israel. And whence has this come about, except from the blessing of Japheth? For in the people of the Gentiles the Church has occupied the whole world. This very thing, this was foretold, when it was said: May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem (Gen 9:26-27).

See, Manicheans, see; behold, the whole world is in your sight: this you are astonished at, this you grieve over in our peoples, because God enlarges Japheth. See whether he does not dwell in the tents of Shem, that is, in the Churches which the Apostles, the sons of the Prophets, constructed. Hear what Paul says to the now faithful Gentiles: You who were, he says, at that time without Christ, alienated from the fellowship of Israel, and strangers to the covenants, and not having the hope of the promise, and without God in this world. By these words it is shown that Japheth was not yet dwelling in the tents of Shem. But notice how a little later he concludes. Therefore now, he says, you are no longer strangers and sojourners; but you are fellow citizens of the saints, and of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone (Eph 2:12, 19-20).

Behold how Japheth is enlarged and dwells in the tents of Shem. And yet you hold, read, and preach the Epistles of the Apostles, in which all these things are testified. Where should I reckon you yourselves, except in that accursed middle to whom Christ is not the cornerstone? For we recognize you neither in that wall which, from the circumcision, believed in Christ, whence the Apostles too were; nor in that which is from the foreskin, whence are all from the other Gentiles, running together into the same unity of faith, as into the peace of the corner.

But also all who accept and read any books whatever of our canon, where Christ is shown born and suffering in mortal flesh, and yet do not honorably veil that same mortality, uncovered in the passion, with the joined sacrament of unity, but without the knowledge of piety and love announce that from which we were all born—although they disagree among themselves, both the Jews from the heretics, and the heretics themselves one from another—are nonetheless, by the one condition of servitude, useful to the Church, whether for some attestation or for some proof.

For of heretics too it is said: There must be heresies, that those who are approved may be made manifest among you (1 Cor 11:19). Go now, and hurl your slanders at the old sacred writings; do this, servants of Ham; go, you to whom the uncovered flesh from which you were born has become worthless: for there would be nothing whereby you could in any way call yourselves Christians, unless Christ, as he was foretold by the Prophets, had come into the world, had drunk from his own vineyard that cup which could not pass, had slept in his passion as in the drunkenness of folly, which is wiser than men; and so the weakness of mortal flesh was uncovered through the hidden counsel of God, stronger than men—without which weakness, had not the Word of God assumed it, the Christian name itself, in which you too glory, would not be on the earth at all.

But do this, as I said; mockingly proclaim what we reverently honor: let the Church use you as those subject to it, that those who are approved may be made manifest in it. So far did those Prophets keep silent about nothing that the Church was either to have or to suffer, that we find you too there in your own places, in a vanity that is destructive for capturing the reprobate, but useful for making the approved manifest.

25. You say that Christ was not foretold by the Israelite Prophets: for the foretelling of whom all those pages keep watch, if you were willing to search them with the piety with which you harass them with frivolity. Who else, in Abraham, goes out from his land and from his kindred, to be enriched and made wealthy among foreigners (See Gen 12:1-3), except he who, having left the land and kindred of the Jews, from whom according to the flesh he was born, so prevails and is so powerful among the Gentiles, as we see? Who else, in Isaac, carried for himself the wood for the victim (See Gen 22:6), except he who himself carried for himself the cross for the passion? Who else, the ram to be sacrificed, clung by its horns in the thicket, except he who, to be offered for us, was affixed to the gibbet of the cross?

26. Who else, in the angel who wrestled with Jacob, when, being the weaker and conquered, he partly blesses the conqueror who prevailed over him as though stronger, and partly renders lame the broad part of his thigh (Gen 32:24-31), except he who, suffering the people of Israel to prevail against him, blessed in them certain ones who believed? But the broad part of Jacob's thigh went lame in the multitude of the carnal people. Who else, the stone placed at Jacob's head, so that it might in a manner be expressed by name, was even anointed, except Christ the head of the man? For who does not know that "Christ" is named from anointing? He too, recalling this very thing in the Gospel, and testifying most plainly that it was figured of himself, when he had said that a certain Nathanael was truly an Israelite in whom there was no guile; and when that man, as one having that stone at his head, had confessed him the Son of God and King of Israel, in a manner anointing the stone by that confession, that is, confessing that he himself is the Christ; there the Lord opportunely recalled also that which Jacob then saw, who by the blessing was called Israel: Amen I say to you, he said, you will see heaven opened, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man (John 1:47-51). For this Israel had seen, when he had that stone at his head: a ladder from earth to heaven, by which the Angels of God ascended and descended (See Gen 28:11-18).

By which were signified the Evangelists, the preachers of Christ: ascending, of course, when, to understand his most supereminent divinity, they pass beyond the whole creation, that they may find it in the beginning, God with God, through whom all things were made (See John 1:1-3); but descending, that they may find him made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law (See Gal 4:4-5). For in him there is a ladder from earth all the way to heaven, from flesh all the way to spirit; because in him carnal people, by progressing, as by ascending, become spiritual: to whom, to be nourished with milk, even the spiritual themselves in a manner descend, when they cannot speak to them as to spiritual people, but as to carnal ones (See 1 Cor 3:1-3).

Thus there is both ascending and descending upon the Son of man. For the Son of man is above, in our head, which is the Savior himself; and the Son of man is below, in his body, which is the Church. We understand that he is also the ladder, because he himself said: I am the way (John 14:6). To him, then, there is ascending, that he may be understood in the heights; and to him there is descending, that the little ones may be nourished in his members. And through him there is ascending and descending: for his preachers, following his example, not only raise themselves up to behold him loftily, but also humble themselves to announce him temperately. See the Apostle ascending: Whether, he says, we are out of our mind, it is to God. See him also descending: Whether we are sober, it is for you. Let him say also through whom he ascended and descended: For the love of Christ, he says, constrains us; judging this, that if one died for all, then all died: and he died for all, that those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them (2 Cor 5:13-15).

27. Whom these holy spectacles in the holy Scriptures do not delight, he, not enduring sound doctrine, turns to fables (See 2 Tim 4:3-4). And those fables indeed solicit, with a certain varied delight, souls that are childish at whatever age of the body: but let us, now the body of Christ, recognize our voice in the Psalm, and say to him: The unrighteous have told me delights; but not as your law, Lord (Ps 119:85 (118:85)). Christ meets me everywhere in those books, everywhere in those Scriptures, as I travel and pant in that sweat of human condemnation, whether openly or hiddenly, and refreshes me: he both inflames in me, by some difficulty in finding him, the desire by which I may eagerly drink down what I have found, and, stored in the marrow, wholesomely hold it.

28. He is signified to me in Joseph, who, when his brothers persecuted and sold him, is honored in Egypt after his labors (See Gen 37; 47). For we have learned of the labors of Christ in the world of the nations, which Egypt signified, through the various passions of the martyrs; and now we see the honor of Christ in the same world, subjugating all things to himself by the dispensing of his grain. He is signified to me in the rod of Moses, which, made a serpent on the ground, figured his death coming from the serpent: but that, when its tail is seized, it is again made a rod (See Exod 4:2-4), signifies that afterward, when all things have now been accomplished at the end of the action, by rising it returns to what it had been, where, with death consumed through the restoration of life, nothing of the serpent appears.

We too, his body, are rolled along through the slippery places of the times in the same mortality: but at the very end, like the tail of the world, seized by the hand, that is, by the power of judgment, lest it slip further, we shall be restored, and, rising with the last enemy, death, destroyed (See 1 Cor 15:26), we shall be at the right hand of God the rod of the kingdom.

29. Now of the departure of Israel from Egypt, let not me, but the Apostle speak: But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ (See 1 Cor 10:1-4). By expounding one thing, he introduced understanding into the rest. For if the rock is Christ on account of firmness, why is the manna not also Christ, as the living bread that came down from heaven (See John 6:42)? On which those who truly feed live spiritually. For those who took the old figure carnally died. But when the Apostle says, They ate the same spiritual food, he shows that this too is to be understood spiritually in Christ; just as he opened why he had called the drink spiritual when he added: And the rock was Christ: which once opened, all things shone forth. Why, then, is the cloud not also Christ, and the column, since he is upright and firm and supporting our weakness: shining by night, not shining by day; that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (John 9:39)? The Red Sea too is red; surely the Baptism consecrated by the blood of Christ. The enemies following behind die: past sins.

30. The people is led through the desert (See Exod 17:1); all baptized, not yet fully enjoying the promised homeland, but, by hoping for what they do not see and by awaiting it through patience (See Rom 8:25), are, as it were, in the desert. And there are laborious and perilous temptations, lest they return in heart to Egypt. Nor yet does Christ forsake them there: for that column too does not withdraw (See Num 14:14). And the bitter waters grow sweet by wood: because the enemy peoples grow gentle when the sign of the cross of Christ is honored. And the twelve springs, watering seventy palm trees (See Exod 15:23-27), prefigure the apostolic grace, watering the peoples in the number seven multiplied tenfold, so that through the sevenfold gift of the Spirit the decalogue of the Law may be fulfilled. And the enemy, striving to block the way, is overcome, with Moses' hands stretched out, by the sign of the Lord's cross (See Exod 17). And the deadly bites of the serpents are healed when the bronze serpent is lifted up and looked upon: which is declared by the very words of the Lord: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, he says, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life (Num 21:9; John 3:14). Do not these things too, then, cry out? Is the deafness in hard hearts so great?

The Passover is made in the slaying of a sheep: Christ is slain, of whom it is said in the Gospel: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Those who make the Passover are forbidden to break the bones: the bones of the Lord are not broken on the cross. The Evangelist testifies that it was said on this account: You shall not break a bone of him (Exod 12:46; John 19:36).

The doorposts are smeared with blood, that destruction may be driven off (See Exod 12:22-23): the foreheads of the people are marked with the sign of the Lord's passion for the protection of salvation. The Law is given there on the fiftieth day after the Passover was kept (See Exod 20): the Holy Spirit came on the fiftieth day after the Lord's passion (See Acts 2:1-4). The Law there is said to be written by the finger of God (See Exod 31:18): the Lord says of the Holy Spirit: By the finger of God I cast out demons (Luke 11:20).

And Faustus cries out, with his eyes closed, that he has found nothing in those writings that pertains to the foretelling of Christ! But what wonder is it if he has eyes for reading and has not a heart for understanding, who, placed before the closed door of the divine secret, does not knock with the faith of piety, but insults with the elation of impiety? Plainly let it be so, let it so come to pass: for it is just. Let the door of salvation be closed to the proud: let the meek man come, whom the Lord teaches his ways (See Ps 25:9 (24:9)), and let him see both these things in those books, and the rest—either all of them, or certain ones, such as he may believe in all.

31. Let him see Jesus leading the people into the land of promise (See Josh 3): for it was not rashly that he was called this from the beginning, but by that very dispensation, with his name changed, he was called Jesus. Let him see the cluster of grapes from the land of promise hanging on wood (See Num 13:24). Let him see in Jericho, as in this mortal world, a harlot—of such as the Lord says that they go before the proud into the kingdom of heaven (See Matt 21:31)—sending out through the window of her house, as through the mouth of her body, the scarlet thread (See Josh 2:18), which is surely the sign of blood, to confess unto salvation on account of the forgiveness of sins. Let him see the walls of that very city, as the mortal fortifications of the world, fall when the Ark of the Covenant has been carried around them seven times (See Josh 6:7-9): just as now through the times, which slip by in the alternation of seven days, the Covenant of God goes around the whole world; that at the end of the times the last enemy, death, may be destroyed (See 1 Cor 15:26), and from the destruction of the impious one single house, as the one Church, may be freed, cleansed from the shamefulness of fornication, through the window of confession, in the blood of forgiveness.

32. Let him see the times, first of the Judges, afterward of the Kings; just as there will be first the judgment, then afterward the kingdom: and in those very times of Judges and Kings, again and again, in many and various ways, Christ and the Church are figured. Who was it, in Samson killing the lion that met him, when he was making for the foreigners for the sake of seeking a wife (See Judg 14), except he who, about to call the Church from the Gentiles, said: Rejoice, for I have overcome the world (John 16:33)? What does the honeycomb built in the mouth of that slain lion mean (See Judg 14:8), except that, behold, we behold the very laws of the earthly kingdom, which before had raged against Christ, now, with their ferocity destroyed, even providing defenses for the sweetness of the Gospel to be preached?

What is that woman full of confidence, transfixing the enemy's temples with wood (See Judg 4:21), except the faith of the Church, destroying the kingdoms of the devil by the cross of Christ? What is the fleece wet while the threshing floor was dry, and afterward the threshing floor wet while the fleece was dry (See Judg 6:37-40), except that first the one nation of the Hebrews held secretly in its holy ones the mystery of God, which is Christ, of which mystery the whole world was empty; but now, in manifestation, the whole world has it, while she has been emptied?

33. Now in the times of the Kings, to recall a few things from there too: does not the priesthood changed at the very outset to Samuel, with Eli rejected (See 1 Sam 2:27-36), and the kingdom changed to David, with Saul rejected (See 1 Sam 16:1-14), cry out that a new priesthood and a new kingdom are foretold, with the old rejected, which was a shadow of what was to come in our Lord Jesus Christ? Did not David himself, when he ate the loaves of the Presence, which it was not lawful to eat except for the priests alone (See 1 Sam 21:6), figure both as to come in one person, that is, the kingdom and the priesthood in the one Jesus Christ? Does not the fact that ten tribes were separated from the temple, and two left behind (See 1 Kgs 12:16, 20), sufficiently indicate what the Apostle says of that whole nation: A remnant has been saved according to the election of grace (Rom 11:5)?

34. Elijah is fed in the time of famine, with ravens bringing bread in the morning and flesh in the evening (See 1 Kgs 17:6): and the Manicheans do not understand Christ in those books, to whom, hungering as it were for our salvation, sinners confess, now having faith as the first fruits of the spirit, but at the end, as at the evening of the world, even the resurrection of the flesh. Elijah is sent to be fed to a foreign widow, who wished to gather two sticks of wood before she should die: here the sign of the cross is expressed not by the name of wood alone, but also by the number of the pieces of wood. Her flour and oil are blessed (See 1 Kgs 17:9-16): the fruit and cheerfulness of love, which, when it is spent, does not fail; for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7).

The boys who insulted Elisha and cried out, "Baldhead, baldhead," are eaten by beasts (See 2 Kgs 2:23-24): those who with childish folly deride Christ crucified in the place of Calvary, invaded by demons, perish. Elisha sends his staff over the dead boy by his servant, and he does not revive; he comes himself, joins and fits himself to his death, and the boy revives (See 2 Kgs 4:29-37): the Word of God sent the Law through his servant, and it did not profit the human race, dead in sins; yet it was not sent without cause; for he sent it who knew it was to be sent first: he came himself, conformed himself to us, made a partaker of our death, and we were given life.

When wood was being cut with axes, the iron, leaping off the wood, was sunk in the depth of the river, and, when wood was thrown over it by Elisha, returned (See 2 Kgs 6:4-7); so when the presence of Christ, working through his body, was cutting down the impious Jews like unfruitful trees—because John had said of him, Behold, the axe is laid to the roots of the tree (Matt 3:10)—he, with the passion intervening at their hands, deserted that very body, descending into the depths of the underworld, where, with it placed above in the burial, as the spirit returned to its handle, as it were, he rose. How many things I pass over, constrained by the necessity of brevity, those who read know.

36. Now the very migration into Babylon, to which the Spirit of God through the prophet Jeremiah commands them to go, and to pray for those very people in whose realm they sojourn, because in their peace there would be peace for them too, and to build houses, and plant new vineyards, and plant gardens (See Jer 29:1-7)—who would not recognize what he prefigured, if he had attended to the true Israelites, in whom there is no guile (See John 1:47), who through the apostolic dispensation, with the evangelical sacrament, migrated to the kingdom of the Gentiles? Hence the Apostle, as though repeating Jeremiah, says to us: I will, therefore, that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for those who are in high places, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life, in all piety and love: for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:1-4).

From this, indeed, with those too believing, were built the dwellings of peace, the basilicas of the Christian congregations, and were planted the new vineyards of the faithful people, and the gardens; where, even among all the vegetables, that grain of mustard reigns, under whose shade stretched far and wide even the high-aspiring pride of the Gentiles, like the birds of heaven, takes refuge and rests (See Matt 13:31-32). For as to the fact that even after seventy years, according to the prophecy of the same Jeremiah, there is a return from captivity, and the temple is renewed (See Jer 29:10; Ezra 1); what faithful man of Christ would not understand that, after the times have rolled away which run their course in the repetition of the sevenfold number of days, we too, that is, the Church of God, must return from the sojourn of this world to that heavenly Jerusalem? Through whom, except through Jesus Christ, the truly great priest, whose figure that Jeshua bore, the great priest of that time when the temple was built after the captivity? Whom the prophet Zechariah saw in filthy garb, and, with the devil conquered who stood for his accusation, the filthy garment taken from him, and a garment of honor and glory given (Zech 3): just as the body of Jesus Christ, which is the Church, with the adversary at the end of the times overcome through judgment, is taken up from the mourning of its sojourn into the glory of everlasting salvation. Which is also sung most plainly in the Psalm of the dedication of the house: You have turned my mourning into joy for me, you have torn off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; that my glory may sing to you, and I may not be pricked with sorrow (Ps 30:11-12 (29:12-13)).

37. Who can, on the occasion of another work, touch on, with however great brevity, all the things which in those old books of the Law and the Prophets announce Christ figuratively? Unless perhaps someone thinks it is done by ingenuity that the things which ran their course by the order of events through their own times are turned, by interpreting, into significations of Christ. This perhaps Jews can say, or pagans: but for those who wish to be thought Christians, the apostolic authority presses on the neck, saying: All these things happened to them in figure; and: All these things were figures of us (1 Cor 10:11, 6).

For if Ishmael and Isaac, men born, signify two Testaments (See Gal 4:22-24); what is to be believed about so many deeds which were done by no natural use, by no necessity of business? Do they signify nothing? If any of us, who are ignorant of Hebrew letters, that is, the very characters of the words, were to see them written on a wall, in some place of honor; who would be so witless as to think the wall painted in that way? Or would he not rather understand it to be writing, so that, even if he were unable to read, he would yet not doubt that those marks signified something? So first all those things which are in the old document of the holy Scriptures—whoever reads them not with a perverse mind ought to be so moved that he does not doubt that they signify something.

38. For example: if a woman had to be made a help for the man, did any necessity compel, or any usefulness urge, even this, that she be made from the side of the sleeping man (See Gen 2:18, 21-22)? If, for the sake of escaping the flood, there was need to build an ark; what need was there for its measurements either to be made just so, or even to be recorded in writings to be propagated to posterity for religion's sake? If, for the sake of restoring the species, the animals had to be shut in; what need was there for that particular number, seven of the clean, two of the unclean? Necessity surely compelled an entrance to be made to the ark; but what compelled it to be made in the side, or even to be committed to memory through writings (See Gen 6:14; 7:3)?

Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son: let him have been so commanded, that his obedience, proved even by such a test, might be made known to posterity; let the son more fittingly have carried the wood, lest the aged father carry it; let him not afterward have been permitted to strike his son, lest by a most grievous bereavement he strike himself: would Abraham have been any less proved, even if there were a return with no blood shed? Or, if the sacrifice now had to be completed, did it pertain to any increase of the victim that that ram should appear clinging by its horns in the thicket (See Gen 22)?

Thus all things, when they are considered, and are found woven together, as it were the superfluous with the necessary, admonish the human mind, that is, the rational mind, first that they signify something, and then to seek what they signify.

39. And so even the Jews themselves, who deride the Christ whose passion we have recognized, being unwilling for him to seem foretold by such figures of things—not only said, but also done—are compelled by us to learn what those things signify: which, unless they grant that they signify something, they do not defend books of such divine authority from the disgrace of foolish fables. A certain Philo saw this, a man most liberally learned, one of them, whose eloquence the Greeks do not hesitate to equal to Plato's: and he tried to interpret some things, not for understanding Christ, in whom he had not believed; but so that from this it might the more appear what a difference there is whether you refer all things to Christ, on whose account they were truly so said, or whether, apart from him, you pursue any conjectures whatever with any sharpness of mind whatever;

and how much that avails which the Apostle says: When you pass over to the Lord, the veil will be taken away (2 Cor 3:16). For, to recall something of this same Philo: wishing the ark of the flood to be understood as built according to the proportion of the human body, he handled all things, as it were, member by member. And as he most subtly consulted even the rules of numbers, all things fittingly came out for him, which would in no way hinder the understanding of Christ, since that Savior of the human race too appeared in a human body; yet they would not compel it, because a human body belongs surely to other men as well. But when it came to the door, which was made in the side of the ark, all conjecture of human ingenuity failed. Yet, to say something, he dared to believe, dared even to say, dared even to write, that by that door were signified the lower parts of the body, through which urine and dung are discharged. No wonder that, not finding the door, he so erred.

But if he had passed over to Christ, the veil being taken away, he would have found the Sacraments of the Church flowing from the side of that Man (See John 19:34). For because it was foretold: The two shall be in one flesh (Gen 2:24), therefore in the ark too some things are referred to Christ, but some to the Church, which whole thing is Christ. So too in the other interpretations of figures throughout the whole text of the divine Scripture one may consider, and compare, the senses of those who understand Christ there, and of those who, apart from Christ, try to twist them to other things.

40. Nor do the pagans clamor against us in this; for they do not dare to contradict our interpreting those things—not only said, but also done—taken figuratively, for the understanding of Christ: especially since the things we understand to have been foretold we also show to have been fulfilled; whereas they, in order somehow to commend their fables, try by interpreting to refer them to some physiologies or theologies, that is, natural or divine reasons: plainly indicating in part what sort they are; but in part dissembling, while they laugh in the theaters at what they venerate in the temples, too free in shamefulness, too servile in superstition.

41. But whoever says to us that those things were neither done nor written for Christ to be understood in them—apart from that great consonance of things prefigured and now fulfilled—he will be struck by other prophetic predictions, open and manifest: such as this: In your seed shall all the nations be blessed. This was said to Abraham, this to Isaac, this to Jacob (Gen 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). Hence not without reason he says: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exod 3:6): surely about to fulfill, in the blessing of all the nations, what he promised from their seed. And not without reason did Abraham himself, when his servant swore to him, command him to put his hand under his thigh (Gen 24:2, 9), knowing that from there would come the flesh of Christ, in whom all the nations are blessed—which we now do not foretell, but what was then foretold, we now see.

42. I would like to know—or rather it would be better not to know—by what blindness of mind Faustus read where Jacob called his sons and said: Gather, that I may announce to you the things that will befall you in the last days (Gen 49:1-2): gather and hear, sons of Jacob; hear Israel, your father. Here surely no one doubts that the person of one prophesying is made clear.

Let us hear, then, what he says to his son Judah, from whose tribe Christ came of the seed of David according to the flesh, as apostolic teaching testifies (Rom 1:3). Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hands upon the backs of your enemies; the sons of your father will adore you. A lion's cub is Judah: from the budding, my son, you have gone up, lying down; you have slept like a lion, and like a lion's cub—who will rouse him? A ruler will not be lacking from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until there come the things laid up for him; and he himself is the expectation of the nations, binding his colt to the vine, and to sackcloth the foal of an ass: he will wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape: his eyes shining from wine, and his teeth whiter than milk (Gen 49:8-12).

Let these things be false, let them be obscure, if they did not shine forth in Christ with the most evident light; if his brothers, the Apostles, and all his coheirs do not praise him, seeking not their own glory but his: if his hands are not upon the backs of his enemies; if whoever still oppose him are not pressed down and bent to the earth, while the Christian peoples grow: if the sons of Jacob did not adore him in the remnant which was saved according to the election of grace (See Rom 11:5): if he himself is not the lion's cub, since by being born he was made a little one; for which reason it was added: From the budding, my son. For the reason was given why a cub, in whose praise it is written elsewhere: A lion's cub is stronger than the beasts of burden (Prov 30:30); that is, even as a little one stronger than the greater: if he did not go up on the cross lying down, when, with head bowed, he gave up the spirit: if he did not sleep like a lion, since even in death itself he was not conquered, but conquered; and like a lion's cub, for he died from there whence he was also born: if that one did not rouse him from the dead, whom no man has seen, nor can see (See 1 Tim 6:16). For by what was said, Who will rouse him?, the signification of one, as it were unknown, is sufficiently expressed.

If a ruler was lacking from Judah, and a leader from his thighs, until there came, at the suitable time, the things which had been promised as though laid up. For there are most certain writings of the very history of the Jews themselves, by which it is shown that a foreigner, Herod, was first king in the nation of the Jews, at which time Christ was born (Matt 2:2-7). So a king of the seed of Judah was not lacking, until there came the things laid up for him. But because what was promised profited not the faithful Jews alone, see what follows: And he himself is the expectation of the nations. He himself bound his colt to the vine, that is, his people, preaching and crying in sackcloth: Do penance; for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near (Matt 3:2). And we recognize the people of the Gentiles subject to him compared to the foal of an ass, on which also he sat, leading it into Jerusalem (Matt 21:2-10), that is, into the vision of peace, teaching the meek his ways.

If he did not wash his robe in wine: for that robe is the glorious Church, which he presents to himself, having no spot or wrinkle (See Eph 5:27): to which it is also said through Isaiah: If your sins are like scarlet, I will whiten them like snow (Isa 1:18). Whence, except from sins forgiven? In what wine, then, except that of which it is said that it will be poured out for many unto the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:28)? For he himself is that cluster which hung on the wood (See Num 13:24). Therefore here too see what he adds: And his garment in the blood of the grape. And now that his eyes shine from wine, those members in his body recognize, to whom it has been granted, by a certain holy drunkenness of the mind alienated from the temporal things slipping away below, to behold the eternal light of wisdom. Whence we recalled something a little before, when Paul said: For whether we are out of our mind, it is to God. These are the eyes shining from wine. But yet, because it follows: Whether we are sober, it is for you (2 Cor 5:13); nor are the little ones, still to be nourished with milk (See Heb 5:12), left behind, because here too it follows: And his teeth whiter than milk.

43. What do you answer to these things, you mad men? Surely these things are manifest; surely they drive away all—I do not say slanders of contradiction, but even the mists of doubt. Seek such things first in those books, believe first such things, which now cannot all be recalled by me, because there are too many; nor many, because it would be long; nor would I wish to recall few, lest they be thought the only ones by those who do not read those books, and lest a faithful and diligent reader reproach me, when he finds many more evident ones, for having set down precisely these which could occur to me at present: for you will find many which do not need even such an admonition as I have just used in the words of Jacob. For who now seeks an expositor while he reads: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter (Isa 53:7); and all the things that are there said manifoldly and evidently: That by his bruise we are healed; That he himself bore our sins (Isa 53:5, 4)? Who would not think it sung as though a Gospel: They have dug my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones; but they themselves considered and looked upon me: they divided my garments among themselves, and over my robe they cast lots? Who, unless too blind, does not now perceive being fulfilled: All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will adore in his sight (Ps 22:16-18, 27 (21:17-19, 28))? What of that in the Gospel: My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt 26:38); and: Now my soul is troubled (John 12:27)? Did it not first sound in the Psalm: I slept troubled? And whence did it come about that he slept?

Of those by whose voices it was shouted: Crucify, crucify (Luke 23:21-22); does he not also foretell, going on in the Psalm: The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword? But what did they do, what did they harm one who was to rise, and to ascend above the heavens, and to possess the whole world with the glory of his name? See whether the Psalm has not before been silent about this: for it follows: Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and over all the earth your glory (Ps 57:4-5 (56:5-6)). Who ever doubted that it was said of Christ: The Lord said to me, You are my Son, today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and your possession the ends of the earth (Ps 2:7-8)? Whom else has anyone been permitted to understand, where Jeremiah says, doubtless of Wisdom: He delivered her to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved: after this she was seen on the earth, and conversed with men (Bar 3:37-38)?

44. Who would not recognize the same Savior in Daniel, when the son of man is presented to the Ancient of days, and receives a kingdom without end, that all the nations should serve him (See Dan 7:13-14)? And now, if that passage which the Lord recalled from the prophecy of the same Daniel: When you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel, standing in the holy place; let him who reads understand (Dan 9:27; Matt 24:15)—if, with the times of the weeks reckoned, that number is handled, not only is Christ found, but also the time at which it behooved him to come to suffer. Although even without the computation of times we are wont to press the Jews with the manifest results of things—our dispute with whom is not whether our salvation is in Christ, but whether he has already come and suffered. And they are convicted by the most open facts themselves, not only concerning the faith of all the nations, which that same Scripture, to which they are compelled to yield, foretold would serve him—which Scripture so shines throughout the whole world that it strikes the eyes of all who shuffle—but also concerning the things which have now been done in the very nation of the Jews: that the sanctuary is overthrown, that the sacrifice, and the priest, and the former anointing have ceased: all of which Daniel then foretold would be, when he plainly prophesied that the Holy of holies would be anointed (See Dan 9:24-27). Since, then, all those things have now been done, the anointed Holy of holies is demanded of them too, and they find nothing to answer. But how would they dispute with us, not about Christ, but only about his coming, unless they well knew that he was prophesied in their books? Why do they ask John whether he is the Christ (See John 1:19)? Why do they say to the Lord himself: How long do you hold our soul in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly (John 10:24)? Why do Peter and Andrew and Philip say to Nathanael: We have found the Messiah, which is interpreted Christ (John 1:41), except because this name was both known and awaited in that nation through those writings? For no other nation had and called its kings and priests christs, whose significative anointing it was not lawful to cease, except when he had come who was foretold in them (See 1 Sam 10:1; Exod 29).

For the Jews so knew those christs of theirs that they nonetheless hoped for one, through whom at last they would be freed: but, blinded by the hidden justice of God, while they think only of his power, they did not understand the weakness in which he died for us. Hence we recognize those words foretold of them in the book of Wisdom: Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for there will be respect in his words: if he is truly the Son of God, he will take him up, and will free him from the hands of his adversaries. These things they thought and erred; for their malice blinded them (Wis 2:18-21). Which can also be said most truly of these men, who, amid so great a multitude of testimonies, amid so great an arrangement of foretold things, amid so great a manifestation of fulfilled ones, still say that Christ was not prophesied in those Scriptures. And if they say it again and again, we can again and again bring forth documents, with the help of him who has supplied so great an abundance against the slanders of human error, so that we need not repeat the things we have already recalled.

45. Now further, that other shuffle of Faustus—which, I believe, when he too was being struck back by the most brilliant light of prophecy, he reckoned he had found most cleverly—it irks me even to refute, lest he be thought to have said something for the reason that it was deemed worthy to be answered. For who, even most demented, would say that it is the mark of an enfeebled faith not to believe about Christ without a witness? I would like these men to answer me, on whose word they themselves had believed about Christ: did they hear that voice from heaven: This is my Son (Matt 3:17; 17:5)? Faustus would rather have us believe that voice, he who does not want us to believe about Christ on the testimony of men, as though the knowledge of that voice too reached us without a human witness, when it is plain that it reached us in such a way

that the Apostle says: But how will they call upon him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? But how will they hear without a preacher? Or how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who announce peace, who announce good things! (Rom 10:14-15) You see, surely, how prophetic testimony accompanies the preaching of apostolic teaching. For lest the things the Apostles announced be despised, or be reckoned fabulous, these were shown to have been foretold beforehand by the Prophets: because, even though miracles bore witness, there would not have been lacking those (as even now some still mutter) who would attribute all those things to magical power, unless such a thought of theirs were overcome by prophetic attestation. For no one surely would say that by magical arts, long before they were born, they set up Prophets for themselves by whom they would be foretold. But evidently Faustus, who believed about a false Christ on the errors of the Persians, forbids us to believe about the true Christ on the testimony of the Hebrew Prophets.

46. But Catholic teaching teaches that the Christian mind ought first to be nourished by simple faith, in order to make it capable of understanding things heavenly and eternal. For thus the prophet too says: Unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa 7:9). And that very simple faith, by which we believe before we know the supereminent knowledge of the love of Christ, that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God (See Eph 3:19)—it is not without cause that the dispensation of his humility, by which he was humanly born and suffered, was foretold by the Prophets, through a prophetic nation, through a prophetic people, through a prophetic kingdom, so long before; except because in that folly which is wiser than men, and in that weakness which is stronger than men (See 1 Cor 1:25), something great lies hidden for our justification and glorification. And there all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (See Col 2:3), which are opened to no one if he has despised the food conveyed to him through the maternal flesh, that is, the nourishment of milk through the apostolic and prophetic breasts; and, loathing as it were the food of infancy as though of an advanced age, has rushed into the poisons of heretics before the food of wisdom, for which he rashly reckons himself fit. Therefore what we say, that simple faith is necessary, is not contrary to what we say, that the Prophets are to be believed: for it pertains rather to this, that the Prophets be believed, before, with the mind purged and strengthened, he who spoke thus through the Prophets can be understood.

47. But, you say, if they prophesied Christ, they did not live worthily or fittingly in accordance with their prophecy. Whence do you know this? Or can you judge what it is to live either well or badly, you whose righteousness is that a melon that does not feel is rather to be helped, so that you may eat it, than a hungry beggar, so that you may give him something to eat? But for the Catholic little ones, before they know what is the perfect righteousness of the human soul, and how great a difference there is between that one for which one sighs and this one by which one lives here, it suffices to think this about those men, which the soundness of apostolic teaching commends, that the righteous man lives by faith (Rom 1:17). And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. For the Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the nations by faith, foretold to Abraham, saying: That in your seed all the nations will be blessed (Gal 3:6, 8). These are the Apostle's words. If, at this so clear and to all so well-known voice, you would awaken from your most deceitful dreams, you would follow the footsteps of our father Abraham, and would be blessed in his seed along with all the nations.

For he himself received, as the Apostle says, the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which is in the foreskin, that he might be the father of all who believe through the foreskin, that it might be counted to them also for righteousness: that he might be the father of circumcision, not only to those who are of the circumcision, but also to those who follow the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham, which is in the foreskin (Rom 4:11-12).

Whose righteousness of faith, then, is set before us to be imitated as an example, so that we too, justified by faith, may have peace toward God, we ought to understand how he lived, not to reproach it: lest, by abortion, we slip from the womb of mother Church before, formed and perfected by a stable conception, we are born.

48. This I would briefly answer Faustus, on behalf of the morals of the Patriarchs and Prophets, out of the voice of our little ones: among whom I would reckon myself too, provided that I do not reproach the life of the holy ancients, even if I do not understand how mystically they lived—whose life the Apostles laudably preached to us in their Gospel, just as those men by their prophecy foretold the Apostles to come, so that the two Testaments cry out to each other, like the two Seraphim: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts (Isa 6:3). But when Faustus has begun to accuse the Patriarchs and Prophets, not by a general and indefinite reproach, as he did here, but by recalling their deeds in particular, the Lord their God, who is also ours, will help me to answer each thing fittingly and aptly. But as it is, Faustus the Manichean reviles those men, while Paul the apostle praises them: let each choose whom to believe.

1. Faustus said: How do you worship Christ, while repudiating the Prophets, from whose predictions it is accepted that he was to come?

Whether anyone could prove, when the matter began to be examined, that any of the Hebrew Prophets announced our Christ, that is, the Son of God, I do not know. But even if this is so, what is it to us? This reproach awaits those who, having perhaps been converted from Judaism to Christianity under the testimonies, as you maintain, of the Prophets, afterward neglected them, as ungrateful for benefits. But we, on the other hand, are Gentiles by nature, that is, what Paul calls the foreskin (See Eph 2:11), born under another law, and with other heralds whom the Gentile world calls seers, and from these we were afterward converted to Christianity: not having first been made Jews, so that we should rightly follow the faith of the Hebrew Prophets in going to Christianity, but roused only by the report, and the opinion of the virtues and the wisdom of our Liberator Christ Jesus. Hence, if to me, still abiding in my ancestral religion, a preacher had come and wished to introduce Christ to me from the Prophets, I would at once have thought him demented, who tried to build up for me, a Gentile and a man of a far different religion, things more doubtful out of things more doubtful.

What need was there, then, except that he should first persuade me that the Prophets are to be believed, and then, through the Prophets, Christ? But for this very thing to be done, there was need likewise of other Prophets, who should win faith for these. Therefore, if you think Christ is to be accepted through the Prophets, through whom will you accept the Prophets? Or will you say: Through Christ, so that in turn, that is, so that each commends the other, Christ the Prophets, and the Prophets Christ? But a pagan, free of the condition of both of them, would believe neither the Prophets speaking about Christ, nor Christ about the Prophets. So whoever becomes a Christian from among the Gentiles owes the whole to nothing other than his own faith.

And that what we say may be made plainer by an example, let us suppose someone, a Gentile, now being catechized by us, to whom, sitting beside him, we say: Believe in Christ, because he is God. But he says: Whence do you prove this to me? And we, answering, say: From the Prophets. Again, when he asks: What Prophets? we answer: The Hebrews. And he, smiling, says: But these I least of all believe. But we answer: What, that Christ confirms them? But he, laughing much more, says: What, that I do not believe him either? What will happen, when these things have so passed? Shall we not be stuck, and shall he not, having laughed at us as imprudent, return to his own?

So, as I said, the testimonies of the Hebrews confer nothing on the Christian Church, which consists more of Gentiles than of Jews. To be sure, if there are any predictions about Christ, as is reported, of the Sibyl, or of Hermes, whom they call Trismegistus, or of Orpheus, and of other seers in the Gentile world, these can help us somewhat toward faith, who are made Christians from among the Gentiles: but the testimonies of the Hebrews, even if they are true, are to us useless before faith, superfluous after faith; because before, indeed, we could not believe them, but now we believe them as a thing over and above.

2. Augustine replied: May the earlier, so lengthy reply profit us here for brevity of answering. For I think that whoever has read it now laughs at this man raving such things, and still saying that the Hebrew Prophets did not foretell Christ the Son of God: in which nation alone the very name that is called Christ was most sacred, both in the king and in the priest (See Exod 29; 1 Sam 10:1; Exod 19); nor was it taken away from there before he himself had come who was figured in them (See Dan 9:24).

But let them themselves answer whence they learned the name of Christ. If from Mani, I ask Mani himself how they believed—to pass over the others—men of Africa believing a man of Persia: when Faustus reproaches the Romans, and the Greeks, or other nations, if they have believed about Christ the Hebrew Prophets as though foreigners; and says that the prophecies of the Sibyl and of Orpheus, or any others perhaps of the Gentile seers, are more suited to them, that one may believe in Christ: and does not notice that those are recited in no Churches, while the Hebrew Prophets shine forth among all the nations, and lead so great swarms of the faithful to Christian salvation. But to say that Hebrew prophecy is not suited to the Gentiles, that they may believe in Christ, when he sees all the nations believing in Christ through Hebrew prophecy, is ridiculous insanity.

3. Such a Christ displeases you as has been foretold through the Hebrews: and yet all the peoples of the Gentiles, among whom you reckon Hebrew prophecy to have no weight of authority, believe in such a Christ as has been foretold through the Hebrews; accepting, namely, the Gospel which God had promised before, as the Apostle recalls, through his Prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:2-3). Hence the prophet Isaiah said: There will be a root of Jesse, who will rise to reign over the nations: in him the nations will hope (Isa 11:10); and: Behold, a Virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel (Isa 7:14), which is interpreted, God with us (Matt 1:23):

nor let these men think that only a man, Christ, was foretold by the Hebrew Prophets; for Faustus seems to have touched on this, when he said "our Christ indeed, the Son of God"; as though the Hebrews did not call their Christ the Son of God. Behold, we have shown the God Christ, the Virgin's Son, from Hebrew prophecy. For surely, lest even the carnal Jews should think Christ to be only this, that he was made man for our sake of the seed of David, the Lord himself admonishes them from the prophecy of the same David, asking of them what seemed to them about Christ, whose Son they said he was. And when they had answered, David's; lest, as I said, this only be thought, and they not look to Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us, he said: How, then, does David himself in the spirit call him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet (Matt 22:42-44; Ps 110:1 (109:1))? Behold, I say, we have shown from Hebrew prophecy the God Christ: do you show some prophecy of yours, whence you learned the name of Christ.

4. For your Mani was not a prophet of Christ to come: for indeed he calls himself his apostle, with most impudent deceit; for it is established that this heresy arose not only after Tertullian, but even after Cyprian. Yet all his letters begin thus: "Mani, an apostle of Jesus Christ." Why did you believe him about Christ? What witness of his apostolate did he bring you? And the very name of Christ, which we know to have been established only in the kingdom of the Jews, in priests and kings, so that not only this or that man, but the whole nation itself and the whole kingdom should be made a prophet of Christ and of the Christian kingdom—why did this man invade it, why did he usurp it, who forbids you to believe the Hebrew Prophets, so that a false and deceitful apostle may make you the deceitful disciples of a false Christ?

Finally, lest it be said to him: You lie, he may bring forth to you some prophets too, foretelling Christ according to his assertion: what will you do with him, such a one as Faustus set forth as an example to be catechized, who would be willing to believe neither them nor him? Or will he call our Apostles as witnesses for himself? Not, I think, will he produce men, but he will open Books: which he will find opened not for him, but against him. For there we read and teach that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, that the Son of God was made of the seed of David according to the flesh (See Matt 1:22-25; Luke 2:7; Rom 1:3).

But if he says they have been falsified, he himself will assail the trustworthiness of his own witnesses: but if he brings forth other manuscripts, which he calls those of our Apostles, how will he himself give them an authority which he did not receive through the Churches of Christ established by the Apostles themselves, so that from there it might run on to posterity with a confirmed commendation? How does he, whom I do not believe, bring forth to me Scriptures by which I should believe about him; and himself try to give them authority, when I do not believe him?

5. But if you believed about Christ on report; for Faustus too, constrained in great straits, touched on this in passing, lest, namely, he be either compelled to bring forth books whose authority is nothing, or be bound to those whose authority is contrary to him: if, then, you believed about Christ on report, see whether report is a suitable witness, consider diligently into what you hurl yourselves. For report spreads abroad many bad things about you, which you do not want to be believed. What reasoning, then, is it, to want this report about Christ to be true, which you want to be false about you? What of the fact that you even contradict the report about Christ?

For that report is clearer, that is more prevailing, which holds the ears and minds and tongues of all the nations, which, with Christ of the seed of David spread abroad according to the Hebrew Scriptures, fulfills what is written there, promised to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob: In your seed all the nations will be blessed (Gen 22:18; 26:4; 28:14).

What, then, do you answer, on whose word you believed about Christ, you to whom foreign witnesses are not pleasing? Further, the authority of our Books, strengthened by the consent of so many nations, through the successions of Apostles, bishops, and councils, is against you: but of yours there is none, because it is brought forth both by so few, and by those who worship a lying God and Christ. Hence it comes about, against their lying teaching, that they themselves too are held liars, as imitators of their God and Christ.

But report itself too, when consulted, both proclaims you to be most wicked, and does not cease to preach Christ of the seed of David against you. You did not hear the voice of the Father from heaven (See Matt 3:17; 17:5), you did not see the works of Christ by which he bore witness about himself: the manuscripts in which these things are written you accept, as it were, so that you may deceive under a Christian appearance; but lest they be read against you, you say they have been falsified.

You bring forth from there Christ saying: If you do not believe me, believe the works (John 10:38); and: I am one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me (John 8:18): and you do not want it brought forth from there against you: Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life; they themselves bear witness about me; and: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote about me (John 5:39, 46); and: They have there Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them (Luke 16:29); and: If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe him if someone rises from the dead (Luke 16:31)!

Whence have you come out here? Whence is your confidence? You reject the Scriptures confirmed and commended by so great authority, you do not work miracles: which if you did, we would beware of even those in you, the Lord forewarning us and saying: Many false christs and false prophets will arise, and will do many signs and wonders, to deceive, if it can be done, even the elect: behold, I have foretold you (Matt 24:24-25). So far did he want nothing to be believed against the confirmed authority of the Scriptures, which proves its trustworthiness by the facts themselves, which shows these things being fulfilled and brought about through the successions of times, which foretold them so long before they came to pass.

6. It remains that you say you offer a reasoning so sure and unconquerable that, with the truth declared through itself, it requires no authority of a witness, no truth of a miracle. What do you say? What do you bring forth? What reasoning, what truth? That fable is long and vain, a childish mockery, and a womanish jest, and an old wives' raving, containing a mutilated beginning, and a rotten middle, and a ruinous end.

For when it has been said to you, from its beginning: What was the race of darkness going to do to the immortal, invisible, incorruptible God, if he had been unwilling to fight with it? and from its middle: How is God incorruptible and incapable of contamination, whose members you crush by eating and digesting them in fruits and vegetables, so that you may purify them? and from its end: What did the wretched soul do, that it should be punished with a perpetual bond in the clod of darkness—the soul which, stained not by its own fault but by another's, could not be cleansed, with its God failing it, by whose sending it was polluted? while you hesitate, and find nothing to answer, your manuscripts, so many and so large and so costly, are looked upon; and much grief is felt for the labors of the copyists, and the purses of the wretched, and the bread of the deceived.

If, then, neither the antiquity of the authority of the Scriptures, nor the power of miracles, nor the soundness of morals, nor the truth of reasoning vouches for you; go away confounded, and return having confessed that he himself is the Christ, the Savior of all who believe in him: whose name and whose Church the present times so display as the past times announced; not through some man or other proceeding from cavernous hiding places, but through a certain nation, and a certain kingdom, propagated and established for this, that there all things about him might be marked beforehand in figures, which would now be recognized expressed in facts, and that there, through the Prophets, things might be written as foretold, which now, preached through the Apostles, might be presented?

7. Accordingly, set yourselves some Gentile to be catechized, in whom Faustus laughed that we failed: where it was not he who is to be laughed at, but he himself who is to be mourned that failed. For if we say to a Gentile man, Believe in Christ, because he is God; and he answers: Whence do I believe? and, the authority of the Prophets having been brought forth, he says he does not believe them, because they are Hebrews and he a pagan; we show the trustworthiness of the Prophets from the things which they sang as to come and are perceived to have come.

For I believe that it would not escape him how great persecutions the Christian religion first endured from the kings of this world: or if it did escape him, it would easily be proved to him through the very history of the nations and the imperial laws committed to writing and memory: which, when he learned it foretold so long before by the prophet who says: Why have the nations raged, and the peoples meditated vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes came together as one, against the Lord and against his Christ—that this was not said about David himself easily appears in that same psalm. For there is said also that which confounds men, however most stubborn, by the very manifestation of things: The Lord said to me: You are my Son, today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and your possession the ends of the earth (Ps 2:1-2, 7-8): which was not granted to the nation of the Jews in which David reigned; but that it has been fulfilled, with the name of Christ occupying all the nations far and wide, no one doubts.

I believe he would be moved, when he heard from there many other things too from the prophets, which it would now be long to pursue. He would also see the very kings of the earth now wholesomely subjected to the rule of Christ, and all the nations serving him: and there would be read to him from the Psalm, foretold so long before: All the kings of the earth will adore him, all the nations will serve him (Ps 72:11 (71:11)):

and that whole psalm itself, which is said figuratively as though of Solomon, if he were willing to read it, he would find Christ truly the peaceful king; for this is what the name Solomon is interpreted to mean: in whom he would recognize all the things said there fulfilled, far most remote from that man Solomon, king of Israel. Likewise that psalm where God is said to be anointed by God, and surely Christ is declared by that very anointing; and the same Christ is shown most plainly to be God, when the anointed God is introduced (See Ps 45:7 (44:8)): if he were willing to consider the things said there about Christ, the things about the Church itself, the things he would read there foretold, but would behold fulfilled throughout the world;

he would see also the very idols of the nations so perishing from the world through the name of Christ, and would learn that this very thing was foretold by the Prophets: he would hear Jeremiah saying: Thus you will say to them: Let the gods who did not make heaven and earth perish from the earth, and from under heaven (Jer 10:11). Likewise in another place, when he heard the same prophet saying: Lord, my strength, and my help, and my refuge in the day of evils: to you the nations will come from the end of the earth, and will say: How false are the idols our fathers possessed, and there is no profit in them! Shall a man make gods, and they themselves are not gods? Therefore, behold, I will show them at that time; I will show them my hand, and my power, and they will know that I am the Lord (Jer 16:19-21). Hearing these things from prophetic Scripture, and perceiving them throughout the whole earth, what shall I say of how he would be moved to faith, when we prove this too by the facts themselves, since we recognize the hearts of the faithful so strengthened through a prophecy written before the times and fulfilled in these times?

8. But now, lest he should think Christ a man, such as certain great men have been, the same prophet would strike this from his thought. For there it follows and says: Cursed is the man who has hope in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord: and he will be like the tamarisk that is in the desert; he will not see when good things come, and he will dwell among the wicked in a desert land, in a salt land that will not be inhabited; and: Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and the Lord will be his hope: and he will be like a fruitful tree by the water, and will send its roots into the moisture; it will not fear when the heat comes, and there will be on it leafy shoots; in the year of drought it will not fear, and it will not cease to bear fruit (Jer 17:5-8).

Here surely, since he said that the man who places his hope in man is cursed, and explained that curse by prophetic likenesses; and that the man who trusts in the Lord is blessed, and likewise wove that blessing with fitting likenesses; that Gentile would perhaps be disturbed how we announce to him the God Christ, that he should not place his hope in a man, and again say that he is a man, not from his own nature, but from our mortality assumed. For thus some erred by believing Christ God and denying him man: and again some, by supposing him man and denying him God, either despised him, or, placing their hope in a man, fell into that curse.

Here, then, if this Gentile were disturbed, and said that this prophet had spoken against our faith: because we, according to apostolic teaching, would say that Christ is not only God, that hope may be most securely placed in him, but also the Mediator of God and men, the man Jesus (See 1 Tim 2:5); whereas this prophet had said only "God," but made no mention of human nature: in that very place he would hear the voice of the same prophet admonishing and correcting him: The heart is heavy above all things, and he is a man, and who will recognize him? (Jer 17:9) For he is therefore a man, that those heavy of heart might be healed by faith through the form of a servant, and recognize him as God who was made man for their sake, that their hope might not be in a man, but in a man who is God.

And yet, the heart is heavy above all things, and he is a man: taking the form of a servant. And who will recognize him? who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal to God (Phil 2:7, 6). And he is a man: because the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). And who will recognize him? because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).

And truly the heart is heavy above all things; for even in his disciples that heaviness of heart was present, when he said to them: So long a time I am with you, and you have not known me? For what is, So long a time I am with you, except what is said here: And he is a man? And what is that, And you have not known me? except what is said here: And who will recognize him? Whom, except him who says: He who has seen me has seen the Father also (John 14:9)?

That our hope be not in a man, on account of that curse uttered through the prophet: but that it be in a man who is God, that is, in the Son of God, the Savior Jesus Christ, the Mediator of God and men; both he than whom the Father is greater on account of the form of a servant, and he who is equal to the Father on account of the form of God.

9. Isaiah also says: The reproach of men will be humbled and fall, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day: and they will hide all things made by hands in caves and in the clefts of the rocks and in the caverns of the earth, from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the majesty of his power, when he rises to shatter the earth. For in that day a man will cast away the gold and silver abominations which they made to adore, things superfluous and harmful (Isa 2:17-20). And perhaps this Gentile whom we are catechizing, whom Faustus said would say with a laugh, "I do not believe the Hebrew Prophets," has hidden some idols made by hand in a cave, or in a cleft of rock, or in a cavern of the earth, or knows some friend of his to have done this, or knows it to have been done in his city or on his estate, from the face of the fear of the Lord, who, through the kings of the earth, according to that same prophecy, now serving and adoring him, shatters the earth by most severe laws, that is, breaks the audacity of the earthly heart. How, then, would he say, "I do not believe the Hebrew Prophets," when he perhaps recognizes fulfilled in himself what was foretold of old by the Hebrew Prophets?

10. It was rather to be feared that, surrounded by so great an evidence of things, he might perhaps say that, after these things began to happen throughout the world, the Christians composed these writings, so that they might be thought foretold beforehand by God, lest they be despised as though rashly done by men. This was to be feared, were there not the widely scattered and widely known people of the Jews: that Cain who received a mark, lest he be killed by anyone (See Gen 4:15), and that Ham, the servant of his brothers (See Gen 9:25), burdened by carrying the books by which those others are instructed.

For through their manuscripts we prove that these things were not written by us, as though warned of the outcome of events, but foretold of old and preserved in that kingdom, and now made manifest and fulfilled: in which even the things that are less clear there, because they happened to them in figure; but were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11), are now illumined and resolved; and the things which were still shadowed by the shadows of future things are now manifested by the light of things accomplished.

11. Perhaps he would also say that he is moved by this, that those very people, in whose books these things are found foretold, which are now seen fulfilled, do not hold with us the fellowship of that same Gospel. But when he were taught that this too was foretold by those same Prophets, how greatly would he be moved to faith? Who is so demented as not to see it? Who is so impudent as to pretend not to see it?

For who would doubt that this was prophesied of the Jews, when Isaiah says: The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's manger; but Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood me (Isa 1:3); or that which the Apostle recalls: All day long I have stretched out my hands to a people not believing and contradicting (Rom 10:21; Isa 65:2); and especially that: God gave them a spirit of compunction, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear and should not understand (Rom 11:8; Isa 6:10); and many things of this kind?

But if he said: "What, then, did the Jews sin, if God blinded them so that they should not recognize Christ?", we would show, as far as we could, in instructing the untaught man, that the just punishment of this blindness comes from other hidden sins known to God: that not only did the Apostle say of certain men: For this God handed them over to the lust of their heart, or to a reprobate mind, to do the things that are not fitting (Rom 1:24, 28), wishing to show that certain manifest sins come from the punishment of certain hidden ones; but that the Prophets themselves did not keep silent about this, we would demonstrate. For, not to go on at length, the same Jeremiah, in that very place where he says: And he is a man, and who will recognize him? (Jer 17:9)—lest, as though by this very thing the Jews were excused, because they did not recognize him: For if they had recognized him, as the Apostle says, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8)—goes on, and shows that it was from their hidden desert that they did not recognize him. For he says: I the Lord, searching hearts, and testing reins, that I may give to each according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his pursuits (Jer 17:10).

12. Further, if that Gentile were moved by this—why even those who are called Christians depart into many and various heresies: neither was this passed over by the Hebrew Prophets, we would teach. For, as though it were consequent that, with the Jews shown in their blindness, this should come into his mind, that many too under the Christian name deviated from the Christian fellowship itself, Jeremiah himself, as though insinuating to us the order of catechizing, at once added: The partridge cried, it gathered what it did not bear, making its riches not with judgment (Jer 17:11). For the partridge is a too contentious animal; it is known with what greediness, in its very contentiousness, it runs into the snare. For heretics do not love to dispute, but in any way to overcome with most impudent obstinacy, that they may gather, as he said here, what they did not bear. For they find the Christians, whom they especially seduce by the name of Christ, already born through the Gospel of that same Christ, and make them their riches: not, indeed, with judgment, but with inconsiderate rashness. For they do not understand that there is the true and wholesome, and in a manner genuine and rooted, Christian fellowship, from which they separated those whom they gathered to their own riches.

And because of such the Apostle says: For as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these too resist the truth; men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith: but they will go no further, for their madness will be manifest to all, as theirs also was (2 Tim 3:8-9): this Prophet too goes on, and says of the partridge that gathered what it did not bear: In the half of its days they will leave it, and in its latter end it will be foolish (Jer 17:11): that is, he who at first seduced, as it were by the promise and display of surpassing wisdom, will be foolish, that is, will appear foolish. For to those to whom he was at first wise, he will then be foolish, when it will appear, because his madness will be known to all.

13. And as though that one whom we are catechizing should ask and say: By what manifest sign, then, while I am still a little one, and not yet able to discern clear truth from so many errors; by what manifest indication shall I hold the Church of Christ, in whom I am already compelled to believe by so great a manifestation of things foretold beforehand? The same prophet goes on, and, as though taking up the movements of his mind in the most orderly way, teaches him that the Church of Christ itself was foretold, which is eminent and apparent to all. For it is the throne of glory, of which the Apostle says: For the temple of God is holy, which you are (1 Cor 3:17). Hence this prophet says: But the throne of glory is exalted, our sanctification (Jer 17:12).

For on account of these movements of little ones, who can be seduced by men, the Lord too, foreseeing the manifestation of the Church's brightness, said: A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden (Matt 5:14): because surely the throne of glory is exalted, our sanctification, so that those may not be heard who draw men over to the rendings of religions, saying: Behold, here is Christ, behold, there (Matt 24:23). For the parties point out, saying: Behold here, behold there. While that city is upon the mountain; which mountain, except that which, according to the prophecy of Daniel, grew from a small stone, and became a great mountain, so that it filled the whole earth (See Dan 2:34-35)? Nor let those be heard who, under the name as it were of a secret and apocryphal truth and of a fewness of men, say: Behold, in the inner chambers, behold, in the desert (Matt 24:23, 26): because a city set on a mountain cannot be hidden, because the throne of glory is exalted, our sanctification.

14. When, then, this Gentile beheld, by these and other testimonies of this kind from the Prophets—about the persecution of kings and peoples, about the faith of kings and peoples, about the abolition of idols, about the blindness of the Jews, about the proof of the manuscripts kept by them, about the madness of heretics, about the excellence of the holy Church of true and genuine Christians—things foretold beforehand and now fulfilled; what would he find more worthy of faith than those Prophets, whom he might choose to believe concerning the divinity of Christ?

For indeed, if before these things were done I were to press the Hebrew Prophets upon a Gentile, by whom he should believe the things to come which he did not yet see done, he might perhaps rightly say: What have I to do with these Prophets, whose truthfulness, by what I should prove it, is not shown to me? But when so great and so many things which they foretold have now been brought to effect and manifestation; plainly that man, if he were not willing to be perverse, would in no way despise either those things which, so long before and with so great preparation, deserved to be commended as to be foreseen and foretold, nor those by whom they could be foreseen and foretold. For we believe no one more prudently, whether about past things which were done long ago, or about future things not yet done, than those who have proved to us the trustworthiness of their words by so many and so great things which, foretold by them, have now been done.

15. Further, the Sibyl, or the Sibyls, and Orpheus, and some Hermes or other, and any other seers or theologians or wise men or philosophers of the Gentiles who are said to have foretold or said true things about the Son of God, or about God the Father, avail something indeed for refuting the vanity of the pagans, yet not for embracing the authority of those men; since we show that we worship that God about whom even they could not keep silent, who partly dared to teach their fellow Gentile peoples that idols and demons were to be worshiped, partly did not dare to forbid it. But those holy authors of ours propagated and ruled, with God commanding and helping, that people, that commonwealth, such a kingdom, in which it was sacrilege which to those others was religion. And so if any there lapsed into the worship of images and demons, either they were punished, by the very laws of their commonwealth, or they were restrained by the most free thunder of prophetic voices. For one God was worshiped by them, who made heaven and earth, by a prophetic rite, that is, one significative of things to come; which rite would be abolished when those things had come which through it were signified to be coming: since the kingdom itself was a kind of great prophet, where the king and the priest were anointed with a mystical signification (See Deut 18:15; Ps 2:6; 110:4 (109:4); 1 Sam 10:1; Exod 29); which was not taken away before—with the Jews themselves too unknowing, and on that account unwilling—until there had come that God anointed with spiritual grace above his fellows, that Holy of holies (See Dan 9:24; Ps 45:7 (44:8)), both the true king by taking thought for us, and the true priest by offering himself for us. Wherefore, as great as is the distance, concerning Christ's coming, between the preaching of the Angels and the confession of the demons, so great is it between the authority of the Prophets and the curiosity of the sacrilegious.

16. By these and such things, which we now touch on briefly, then perhaps argued somewhat more at length according to the necessity of driving off the sluggish error, and asserted with the strength of a richer proof, that Gentile whom Faustus set before us to be catechized, if he preferred his salvation to his sins, would surely be moved to faith: imbued with which, and placed to be cherished in the bosom of the Catholic Church, he would consequently be admonished also what morals he ought to hold. Nor would he be disturbed by the multitude of those in whom he would not find the things he was commanded to observe: although they were gathered with him bodily into the Church, and received the same Sacraments.

He would know that the inheritance of God is to be shared with the few, but his seals with the many: to share with the few the holiness of life, and the gift of love poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5), to which inner fount no stranger comes; but with the many the holiness of the Sacrament, which he who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment to himself (See 1 Cor 11:29), but he who despises to eat will not have life in himself (See John 6:54), and therefore will not come to eternal life. And those same few, in comparison with the multitude of the bad, are called few; but, considered in themselves, they are in a great number, spread throughout the whole world, growing among the tares, and with the chaff, until the day of harvest and winnowing (See Matt 13:25-26; 3:12).

This was said in the Gospel, this foretold beforehand by the Prophets. For it was foretold: As a lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters (Song 2:2). It was foretold: I dwelt in the tents of Kedar; with those who hated peace I was peaceable (Ps 120:5, 7 (119:5, 7)). It was foretold: Mark on the forehead those who groan and mourn over the iniquities of my people, which are done in their midst (Ezek 9:4).

And so this Gentile, whom we would strengthen by such an address, now made a fellow citizen of the saints and of the household of God, and no longer a stranger to Israel (See Eph 2:19, 12), but a true Israelite, in whom there was no guile (See John 1:47), would learn also to say from a simple heart these words, which the same Jeremiah goes on to weave: O patience of Israel, Lord; let all who forsake you be terrified. For when he had spoken of the partridge, which cries and gathers what it did not bear, he commended the excellence of the city set on the mountain, which cannot be hidden, so that heretics might not separate a man from the Catholic Church, saying: But the throne of glory is exalted, our sanctification (Jer 17:12).

Then, as though it should come into mind: What, then, do we do about so many bad people, who are mixed in everywhere all the more, the more excellent the glory of Christ is in the unity of all the nations?, he at once added: O patience of Israel, Lord. For it must be patiently borne, what he says: Let both grow until the harvest (Matt 13:30):

lest, through impatience of tolerating the bad, the good be forsaken, who are properly the body of Christ; and therefore, when they themselves are forsaken, he is forsaken. Hence he subjoined and added: Let all who forsake you be terrified: let those be confounded who have withdrawn into the earth. For "earth" is the man who presumes upon himself, and leads others to presume upon him:

and therefore it follows: They will be overthrown, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fount of life (Jer 17:13). For what else does the partridge cry out, except that with itself, and from itself, is given the fount of life, so that those gathered to it may withdraw from Christ, deceived by the promise of Christ, with whose name they were already held imbued?

For it does not gather those it bore: but, in order to gather those it did not bear, it says: "The salvation which Christ promised is with me; I will give it." But see what this prophet says: Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. Hence the Apostle says: Let no one glory in man (1 Cor 3:21): and this prophet subjoins: For you are my glorying (Jer 17:13-14). In these ways we instruct a man from apostolic and prophetic teaching, that he may be built upon the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets (See Eph 2:20).

17. But how would Faustus persuade a Gentile man of the divinity of Christ, the man whom he set up as saying: I believe neither the Prophets about Christ, nor Christ about the Prophets? Would he believe Christ speaking about himself, when he would not believe him testifying about others? Truly it is ridiculous to think this. For one whom he did not once deem worthy of faith, he would either believe nothing at all, or rather would believe testifying for others than for himself.

Here perhaps Faustus, having been laughed at, would read to the man the Sibyls, and Orpheus, and others of this kind, if he could find any others of the Gentiles who foretold something about Christ? But he would not do it: for he confessed them to be unknown to him, saying: "To be sure, if there are any, as is reported, predictions about Christ of the Sibyl, or of Hermes, whom they call Trismegistus, or of Orpheus, and of other seers in the Gentile world." Not knowing, then, the writings of these men, since through report he supposes that there are some such, he surely would not read them to the man saying: I believe neither the Prophets, nor Christ.

What, then, would he do? Would he bring forth Mani, and from him commend Christ? Never did they do this: but rather, from Christ, whose name is now everywhere sweetly renowned, they always tried to commend Mani, so that with this honey, of course, they might smear the lips of their poisoned cup.

For since Christ promised his own that he would send the Paraclete, that is, the comforter or advocate, the Spirit of truth (See John 14:16); through the occasion of this promise, saying that this Paraclete is Mani, or is in Mani, they creep into the minds of men ignorant of when that one promised by Christ was sent. But those who have read the canonical book which is inscribed the Acts of the Apostles see that promise of Christ recalled there again, and there most manifestly fulfilled (See Acts 1:8; 2:1-4).

But now we ask, whence would he win faith for that Gentile about Christ? For I think no one is so blind as to be willing to say: I believe Mani, while he says: I do not believe Christ. Then, if not laughing, at least with irritation, he would say: Do you so bid me believe Persian books, you who told me not to believe the Hebrew ones? How, then, are you going to capture this man, heretic, unless you find him already in some way subject to the name of Christ; so that, because he no longer doubts that Christ is to be believed, he may, deceived, acquiesce in Mani as a better preacher of Christ? Behold, that is the partridge gathering what it did not bear. Do you not yet forsake him, you whom it gathers, and does he not yet appear foolish to you, he who says that the testimonies of the Hebrews are to us, even if they are true, useless before faith, superfluous after faith?

18. Let those, then, who have believed cast off all the books through which it came about that they believed. For if this is true, I do not see why even the very Gospel of Christ should be read by the faithful. For before faith it is useless, because that Gentile, whom Faustus, himself to be laughed at, or rather to be wept over, brings in laughing, does not believe Christ. But after faith it is superfluous, if even by true proclamations about Christ one believes now superfluously, when one has already believed in him. Here perhaps you will say: But one already faithful ought to read the Gospel, lest he forget what he believed. So, then, you mad men, also the true testimonies of the Prophets, lest he forget why he believed: which if he has forgotten, what he believed cannot be firm with him.

Or cast off now the books of Mani, by whose witness you believed that light fought with darkness, which light was God himself; and that, in order that the light might be able to bind the darkness, the light was first devoured by the darkness, and bound, and defiled, and torn apart: which you, by eating, restore, and loose, and purify, and heal, that a reward may be repaid to you, lest with that part which could not be freed you be condemned in the eternal clod. This little tale you sing daily both by your morals and by your voices:

why do you still seek in it the testimonies of books, so that on superfluous things and on producing your manuscripts another's substance is consumed, and your God is held bound? Burn all those parchments, and your elegant bindings sought out with handsome skins, so that neither may a superfluous thing burden you, and your God may from there be freed, who, as though by a servile punishment, is held bound even in a manuscript. For if you could eat your books even boiled, what a benefit would you bestow on the members of your God? Or would the uncleanness of flesh, even if it could be done, forbid the pages from your banquets? Then let the cleanness of the ink charge it against itself, which clung to the lambskin.

But this too you did, who, as though in your first war, affixed by writing what was clean in the reed to the uncleanness of the parchments: except that the colors convict you by a contrary testimony. For you rather came with the darkness of the ink to the light of the white pages. Ought you to be angry at us who say such things, or at yourselves who believe such things, that, whether you will or not, these consequences follow? But we, both for the recalling of our faith, and for the consolation of our hope, and for the exhortation of our love, read the prophetic and apostolic Books sounding together in mutual voices; and that harmony, as by a heavenly trumpet, both rouses us from the torpor of mortal life, and stretches us toward the prize of the supernal calling. For when the Apostle had recalled something from the prophetic Books, as it is written: The reproaches of those who reproached you fell upon me (Ps 69:9 (68:10); Rom 15:3), he at once subjoins the usefulness of divine reading: For whatever things were written before, he says, were written for our instruction; that through the patience and the consolation of the Scriptures we may have hope toward God (Rom 15:4). But Faustus contradicts. Let it be done to him, then, what Paul says: If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what you received, let him be accursed (Gal 1:9).

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept Moses?

For the sake of the love and piety by which we worship Christ. For who is so irreligious as to look gladly upon one who has cursed his father? Wherefore we too execrate Moses—although he never spared blaspheming any human or divine thing—yet all the more for this, that he assailed Christ the Son of God, who for the sake of our salvation hung on the wood, with a dire reviling of imprecation: whether willingly or by chance, you must see. For by neither of these will he be excused or commended, so as to deserve to be accepted. For he says that everyone who hangs on wood is cursed (See Deut 21:23). This man, then, you wish me to accept, in this man to believe: when, if he was divine, it is established that he knowingly and willingly cursed Christ; but if he cursed him unwillingly and unknowingly, it is established that he was not divine. Choose, then, either one: either that Moses was not a prophet, and sinned through imprudence, so that, while he cursed others after his manner, he unknowingly blasphemed God too; or that he was indeed divine, and was not ignorant of these things to come, but, envying our salvation, which was to come from the wood, poured forth the poisons of his cursing mouth against its author.

And who, then, would believe that this man saw or knew the Father, who so tore the Son: that this man could foretell the coming of the Son, who was ignorant of the outcome of his ascension? Add to this that I also consider how widely this reviling is scattered, and how many things it embraces and violates: so that it touches even all the just and the martyrs, as many as departed this life by the outcome of a similar passion, like Peter, and Andrew, and the rest of the same lot. Whom, unless Moses either did not know, as no prophet, or, if he was a prophet, hated as malignant, he would not have torn with the insult of so cruel an imprecation. For he does not even say that they are cursed at least commonly, that is, only among men, but cursed before God. And if that is so, whence will any hope of blessing be left, either to Christ, or to the Apostles, or to ourselves, if it should happen that we be crucified for the sake of his name?

How imprudent, finally, and devoid of divine inspiration he was, that he could not consider that men are hung on wood for various causes; some indeed for a wicked crime, but some for the sake of righteousness, and on account of God: and therefore confusedly cast all, without any distinction, under the same curse: when, if any prudence were in him—I do not say divination—and if the cross so offended him that it alone was excepted and rejected out of every kind of punishment, he should have said that every wicked and impious man who had hung on wood was cursed; so that there might be some distinction between the just and the unjust: although not even so would he have said true things, since Christ brought the robber from the wood with him into the paradise of his Father (See Luke 23:43). Where, then, is: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood? Or was Barabbas, that notorious robber, who was not only by no means hung on wood, but even sent out of prison at the request of the Jews (See Matt 27:26), more blessed than he who with Christ ascended from the cross into heaven?

What, finally, of the fact that he even calls cursed him who adores the sun or the moon (See Deut 17:3)? If, then, placed under a Gentile king, I be compelled to adore the sun, and when I resist, fearing this curse, I be ordered to be crucified, I shall run into another curse of his, which he uttered against him who hangs on wood. Or is it that to him it is customary to curse all good things? But we ought to value his imprecations as much as those of irritated old women. For so too he pursues all the boys and virgins of God with an equal cursing, saying that everyone is cursed who has not raised up seed in Israel (See Deut 25:5-10).

Which reviling likewise touches principally Jesus, who, himself sprung also, as you say, from the Jews, yet raised up no offspring among them for the sake of preserving posterity. Then also his disciples, some of whom indeed he separated from their wives, whom he had found joined: but some he even forbade to be joined, whom he found untouched. On which account you may rightly recognize that we execrate this unpunished tongue of Moses, assailing with the darts of his curses Christ, who seeks light, holiness, all divine things. And lest perhaps you think there is much difference between one hung and one crucified—for this too you are wont to take up as a defense for yourselves—you may hear Paul prescribing against these your contrivances: 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 wood (Gal 3:13).

2. Augustine replied: The pious man Faustus grieves that Christ was cursed by Moses, and on this account hates Moses, because he loves Christ. Meanwhile, before I open in how great a mystery, and how piously, it was said: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood (Deut 21:23), I ask these pious men why they are angry at Moses, since his curse did not reach the Christ of these men. For if Christ hung on wood, he was surely fastened with nails. Hence he even showed those scars after the resurrection to the less believing disciple (See John 20:27). And if that is so, he surely had a woundable and mortal body, which these men refuse to confess. If, then, both those wounds and those scars were false, false too is that he hung on wood. So that curse could not reach him; there is no reason they should be angry at him from whose mouth it proceeded. And so, if they themselves pretend to be angry at him who cursed the false death of Christ—which I would say according to them—how greatly are they to be avoided, who do not curse Christ, but, what is more execrable, accuse him? For if he who brings a curse upon mortality is not to be accepted; how is he to be detested who casts deceit at the truth? But now let us see, on the occasion of the slandering heretics, how that mystery is expounded to the faithful.

3. The death of man is from the punishment of sin, whence it too is called sin: not because a man sins while he dies, but because it came about from sin that he dies. Just as in one way "tongue" is properly called the flesh which moves within the teeth under the palate; and in another way "tongue" is called what is done through the tongue, according to which manner one is called the Greek tongue, another the Latin: and "hand" in one way is properly called that very member of the body which we move to work, and in another way "hand" is called the writing which is done by the hand. For we say: His hand was produced; his hand was read against him; I have your hand; take back your hand. Hand is surely properly a member of man: but I do not think that that writing is a member of man, and yet it is called a hand, because it was made by the hand.

So too "sin" is called not only the evil deed itself, which is worthy of punishment, but even death itself, which was made by sin, has been called sin. That sin, then, by which one would be guilty of death, Christ did not commit: but that other, that is, death, which was inflicted on human nature by sin, he took up for us. This he hung on the wood, this was cursed through Moses: there death was condemned that it should not reign, and cursed that it should perish. Wherefore through such a sin of Christ our sin too was condemned, that we might be freed, lest, with sin reigning, we remain condemned.

4. Why, then, does Faustus wonder that sin was cursed, that death was cursed, that the mortality of the flesh was cursed—without the sin of Christ, yet made from the sin of man even in Christ? For from Adam he assumed a body, because from Adam was the Virgin Mary, who bore Christ. But God had said in paradise: On the day you touch it, you will die the death (Gen 2:17): this is the curse which hung on the wood. Let him deny Christ cursed who denies him also dead. But he who confesses him both dead, and cannot deny that death is from sin, and on this account that it too is called sin, let him hear the Apostle saying: That our old man was crucified together with him (Rom 6:6); and let him understand whom Moses called cursed. And therefore the Apostle says securely of Christ: Made a curse for us (Gal 3:13): just as he did not fear to say: He died for all (2 Cor 5:15). For this is, he died, which, he was cursed; since death itself is from a curse, and every sin is cursed, whether that which is done, so that punishment follows, or the punishment itself, which in another way is called sin, because it comes from sin. But Christ took up, without guilt, our punishment, that thence he might loose our guilt, and end also our punishment.

5. I would say these things from my own wit, did not the Apostle so often inculcate this, so as both to rouse the sleeping and to choke the slanderers. God sent, he says, his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he might condemn sin from sin in the flesh (Rom 8:3). That flesh, then, was not sinful flesh, because it had not come into Mary through a male from the transmission of mortality: but yet, because death is from sin, and that flesh, although from a virgin, was nonetheless mortal; by that very fact that it was mortal, it had the likeness of sinful flesh. This he also calls sin, consequently saying: That he might condemn sin from sin in the flesh. Likewise in another place: Him, he says, who knew no sin, he made sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor 5:21). Why, then, should Moses fear to say "cursed," which Paul did not fear to say "sin"? Plainly this the Prophet both ought to have foreseen and to have foretold, prepared to be reproached by the heretics along with the Apostle. For whoever reproaches the Prophet for having said "cursed" is compelled to reproach the Apostle for having said "sin": for surely a curse is the companion of sin.

6. Nor is there for this reason greater odium, that he added "before God," so as to say: Cursed before God is everyone who hangs on wood (Deut 21:23). For unless God hated sin, and our death, he would not send his Son to take it up and destroy it. What wonder, then, if that is cursed before God which God hates? For God grants us immortality, which is to come at Christ's coming, all the more gladly, the more mercifully he hates our death, which hung on the wood at Christ's dying. But as for the addition of "everyone," so that it was said: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood, Moses did not, indeed, foresee less that the just too would be on the cross, but he well foresaw that heretics would deny the true death of the Lord, and therefore would wish to separate Christ from this curse, in order to separate him also from the truth of death. For if that death was not true, no curse hung on the crucified Christ on the wood, because he was not truly crucified either.

But against the heretics to come from afar, from how far does Moses cry "you shuffle without cause," to whom the truth of Christ's death is displeasing: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood: not this one or that one, but absolutely everyone! Even the Son of God too? Even him, utterly. For this is what you do not want: from this you busy yourselves, from this you seduce. For "cursed for us" displeases you, because "dead for us" displeases you. For then he would be outside the curse of that Adam, if he were outside his death. But since from man and for man he took up death, from him and for him he did not disdain to take up also the curse which accompanies death—even he, utterly even that Son of God, ever living in his righteousness, but dead on account of our sins (See Rom 4:25), in flesh assumed from our punishment. So too ever blessed in his righteousness, but cursed on account of our sins, in death assumed from our punishment: and by this the word "everyone" was added, lest Christ be said not to pertain to true death, if, by a foolish honoring, he were separated from the curse which is joined to death.

7. But he who is faithful from evangelical truth understands that it is as little an insult to Christ from the mouth of Moses, when he called him cursed—not from the divinity of his majesty, but from the condition of our punishment, by which he was hung on wood—as it is no praise of Christ from the mouth of the Manicheans, when they deny that he had mortal flesh, in which he might suffer true death: because from that prophetic curse the praise of his humility is understood, while from this heretical honor, as it were, the crime of falsehood is cast at him. If, then, you deny the curse, deny his death: if you deny his death, you fight no longer against Moses, but against the Apostles. But if you confess his death, confess that he took up the punishment of our sin without our sin. And now, when you hear of the punishment of sin, either believe that it comes from a blessing, or from a curse: if the punishment of sin comes from a blessing, choose to be always in the punishment of sin; but if you choose to be freed from it, believe that, through the justice of the divine sentence, it came from a curse. Confess, then, that he took up the curse for us, whom you confess to have died for us; and that Moses wished to signify nothing else, when he said: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood (Deut 21:23); except: Mortal is everyone, and dying is everyone, who hangs on wood.

For he could have said: Cursed is everyone mortal; or: Cursed is everyone dying: but this is what the Prophet asserts, because he knew that Christ's death would hang on the cross, and that there would be heretics who would say: He hung indeed on the wood, but in a certain appearance, not so as to die truly. By crying out, then, Cursed, he cried out nothing else than that he truly died, knowing that the death of sinful man, which without sin he himself took up, comes from that curse by which it was said: If you touch it, you will die the death (Gen 2:17). To this pertains also that serpent hung on wood, by which it was signified that Christ did not feign a false death, but hung up that true death on the wood of his passion, into which that serpent cast man by his evil persuasion. This true death these men refuse to look upon: and therefore they are not healed from the poison of the serpent, just as in the desert all who looked upon him were healed (Num 21:9).

8. And so we confess that it is said by the unskilled that it is one thing to be fastened to wood, another to hang on wood. For thus some think this question is to be resolved, by saying that Judas was cursed by Moses, who hanged himself with a noose; as though they first knew whether he hanged himself from wood or from stone. But it is true, what Faustus too recalled, that the Apostle does not allow it to be understood otherwise than as foretold of Christ. But such lack of skill in some Catholics is the hunting ground of the Manicheans. For they are wont to pursue such men, to entangle such men in their deceits: into such men we had fallen, with such we had stuck; from such, not by our own strength, but by the mercy of God, we were torn away.

9. But what divine things did Moses assail, as Faustus accuses, saying that "he never spared any human or divine thing"? For he said it, and goes off: he was at no pains to prove anything, he took no care to show anything. But we know that Moses piously praised all things truly divine, and, with a fitness suited to his time and by the grace of his dispensation, justly governed human things. Let these men demand that I teach this, when they too have tried to teach what Faustus objects—cautiously indeed, sharp as he was, but on this account incautious, because by his own sharpness he destroyed himself. For a heart sharp toward truth is happy, but unhappy against truth.

He did not say, he spared none of men or of gods, but, he says, of human and divine things. For if he said that Moses did not spare God, he would easily be convicted of a false accusation; since Moses would be found everywhere honoring and preaching the true God, who made heaven and earth. But if he said that he spared none of the gods, he would betray to the Christians that he worships those gods whom Moses forbids to adore: and so he would not, with the chicks fleeing under the wings of mother Catholic Church, gather what he did not bear. Therefore, in order to lay snares for the little ones, he said that Moses spared none of the divine things, so that neither could the Christians, by an open worship of gods, flee the impiety of these men too abhorrent from the Christian religion, nor could the pagans favor them against us, who knew that Moses said many true and worthy things against the idols and against the gods of the gentiles, which are demons.

10. But if this displeases these men, let them openly confess themselves to be worshipers of idols or demons: which indeed they would be unknowingly, by this alone, that they are heretics. For of such the Apostle said: That in the last times some will withdraw from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, to the doctrines of demons in the hypocrisy of liars (1 Tim 4:1–2). For who, except demons, to whom deceit is a friend, would persuade these men that Christ suffered deceitfully, died deceitfully, showed scars deceitfully; that is, that he neither truly suffered, nor truly died, nor were those scars true from true wounds? What are more evident doctrines of lying demons than these, by which it is urged that the Son of God, that is, the very truth, is a liar? But these men have in their teaching also an open worship—not, indeed, of demons, but yet of a creature—which the Apostle condemns, saying: And they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25).

11. Accordingly these men, in the phantasms of their fables, worship idols and demons without knowing it: but in the sun and the moon they know that they serve a creature; and as for their thinking that they serve also the Creator, they are much deceived: for they serve their own phantasm, but in no way serve the Creator, when they deny that God created those things which the Apostle plainly shows to pertain to the creation of God, saying, when he was dealing with foods and flesh: For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be cast away which is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:4).

See what sound doctrine is, which, not enduring, you turned to fables. As the Apostle both praises the creation of God, and yet forbids the worship of religion to be shown to it: so too Moses (who seems to you to have spared none of the divine things, for no other reason, I suspect, than that he forbade the sun and the moon to be adored (See Deut 17:3), toward whose circuit you turn yourselves through every corner, to adore them) praised the sun and the moon with true praise, when he narrated that they were made by God, and set in the celestial order to accomplish their works, just as it is: The sun for the power of the day, the moon for the power of the night (Gen 1:16; Ps 136:8–9 (135:8–9)). But the sun and the moon do not rejoice in your false praises.

The devil knows how to rejoice in false praise, a creature that has transgressed. But the powers of the heavens, which have not fallen by sin, wish their maker to be praised in them: whose true praise is that by which no injury is done to their Creator. But injury is done when it is said that they are his parts, or his members, or something of his very substance. For he, perfect, and needing nothing, and nowhere flowing away, neither cut apart, nor stretched out through places, wholly unchangeable in himself, and self-sufficient, blessed in himself, out of the abundance of his goodness, through his Word, said, and they were made; commanded, and they were created (Ps 148:5). Accordingly, if earthly bodies, of which the Apostle was speaking when he said that no food is unclean, are good, because every creature of God is good; how much more the heavenly ones, among which the sun and the moon excel, since the Apostle himself says: Heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but one is the glory of the heavenly, another of the earthly (1 Cor 15:40).

12.1. Moses, then, does not revile the sun and the moon, when he forbids them to be adored; but he praises them as a heavenly creature: but he praises God as the creator of heavenly and earthly things; nor does he want God to be offended, when those are adored in place of him who, on account of him and from him, are praised.

12.2. But how cleverly Faustus seemed to himself to reproach Moses for even calling cursed the one who adores the sun and the moon. "If, then," he says, "placed under a gentile king, I am compelled to adore the sun, and when I resist, fearing this curse, I am ordered to be crucified, I shall run into another curse of his, which he uttered against him who hangs on wood." No gentile king indeed compels you to adore the sun, which not even the sun itself would compel, if it reigned on earth, since not even now does it want this done by you: but just as the Creator himself bears with his impious blasphemers until the judgment, so the heavenly bodies themselves tolerate their vain worshipers until the judgment of their Creator. Yet remember that a Christian king cannot compel the sun to be adored. For Faustus set forth the example of a gentile king, knowing well that what you do, when you adore the sun, pertains to the gentiles. This, then, is not Christian: but everywhere the partridge now sets down the name of Christ, that it may gather what it did not bear (Jer 17:11).

See, however, how easily truth answers, and how easily sound doctrine breaks this, as it were inescapable and two-headed, snare of your question. Behold, let us suppose someone armed with royal power threatening a Christian man that, if he refuses to adore the sun, he be hung on wood. If I avoid, you say, the curse which the Law uttered against the adorer of the sun, I shall fall into that which the same Law uttered against him who hangs on wood. So indeed you will be troubled: but you—rather, not even you, who adore the sun with no one compelling. But the Christian, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets (See Eph 2:20), attends to the individual causes, and the individual curses: he sees that one pertains to the mortal body, which is hung on wood; the other to the mind, by which the sun is adored. For although the body is bowed in adoring, the mind nonetheless either worships what it adores, or feigns; but each is destructive. Wherefore, since death deserved the curse in both, just as it is the death of the body to hang on wood, so it is the death of the mind to adore the sun. The curse, then, is to be chosen in the death of the body, by which curse even the body itself will be freed in the resurrection: but the curse in the death of the soul is to be avoided, lest, with its body, it be condemned in the eternal fire.

For the Lord resolved this question for us, saying: Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul: but fear him who has the power to kill both soul and body in the Gehenna of fire (Matt 10:28). As though he said: Do not fear the curse of bodily death, which is loosed temporally: but fear the curse of spiritual death, by which the soul is tormented forever with its body. Behold, it is not an old wives' curse, but a prophetic foretelling: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood (Deut 21:23). For thus Christ takes away curse from curse, just as death from death, sin from sin. Thus, then, Moses did not blaspheme by saying: Cursed is everyone who hangs on wood: just as the Apostles did not blaspheme by saying: He died (2 Cor 5:14–15); and: Our old man was fastened to the cross with him (Rom 6:6); and: From sin he condemned sin (Rom 8:3); and: Him who knew no sin he made sin for us (2 Cor 5:21); and many things of this kind.

But you, when you shudder at the cursed Christ, confess that you shudder at the death of Christ. Here appears your imprecation—not an old wives' curse, but a devilish dissembling—you who do not believe in the death of Christ's body, by the death of your soul. Yet you urge that death of Christ to be not true, but feigned: as though you did not dare to deceive men through the Christian name, unless you made Christ himself the master of deceit.

13. But as for the fact that Moses seemed to Faustus envious of continence or virginity, because he said: Cursed is everyone who has not raised up seed in Israel (Deut 25:7); let them read Isaiah crying out: Thus says the Lord to all the eunuchs: Those who keep my precepts, and choose the things I will, and keep my covenant; I will give them in my house and within my walls a named place, better than that of sons and daughters: an eternal name I will give them, and it will not fail them (Isa 56:4–5). Or if they think Isaiah contrary to Moses, let this one please them, if that one displeases; it is no small thing against these men. For it is enough for us to know that one God spoke both through Moses and through Isaiah: and that cursed is everyone who has not raised up seed in Israel,

whether then, when, for the propagation of the people according to the flesh, even the working of carnal offspring in conjugal chastity pertained to civic duty; or now, lest anyone born spiritually should think it ought to suffice him, and should not press upon the Lord's gains, by which each, according to his measure, by preaching Christ, ought to beget Christians. So that divine sentence embraces the times of both Testaments with a wondrous brevity: Cursed is everyone who has not raised up seed in Israel.

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament?

Because every vessel that is full does not receive what is poured over it, but pours it out: and a full stomach throws back what is put in. Accordingly the Jews too, sated with the Old Testament from being preoccupied with Moses, rejected the New: and we, filled with the New by being forestalled by Christ, reject the Old. You therefore accept both, because you are full in neither, but half: and one in you is not so much filled up by the other as corrupted; because half-full vessels are never filled from unlike material, but from the same and like to themselves,

as wine to wine, honey to honey, and vinegar to vinegar: over which, if you pour unlike things and not of their own kind, as gall to honey, and water to wine, and fish-sauce to vinegar: this will be called not a filling, but an adulteration. This, then, is the reason why we accept the Old Testament but little:

and because our Church, the bride of Christ, married to him poorer indeed but to a rich one, content with the goods of her husband, disdains the wealth of lowly suitors, the gifts of the Old Testament and of its author are sordid to her, and, a most diligent guardian of her own reputation, she accepts no letters but her bridegroom's. Let your Church, to be sure, usurp the Old Testament, which, like a wanton virgin forgetful of modesty, rejoices in both the gifts and the letters of another man. That lover of yours, finally, and corrupter of the modesty of the Hebrews, their God, by his stone tablet promises you gold and silver, the fullness of the belly (See Deut 8:7–9), and the land of the Canaanites (See Exod 23:23). These so sordid gains have delighted you, so that you take pleasure in sinning after Christ, in being ungrateful for his so immense dowries. These entice you to perish for the God of the Hebrews after your marriage with Christ. Learn, then, even now, that you too are deceived and beguiled by his false promises. He is poor, he is needy, and he cannot even furnish what he promises: for if to his own proper spouse, I mean the Synagogue, he furnishes none of the things he promises, though she complies with him in all things, and serves him more submissively than a maidservant; what will he be able to furnish to you, who are strangers to him, and refuse the yoke of his commandments with a proud neck?

But do you indeed go on doing as you have begun, join a rough patch to an old garment, entrust new wine to worn-out wineskins (See Matt 9:16–17), serve two husbands, to please neither, make the Christian faith, in short, a Hippocentaur, neither a perfect horse nor a man: permit us to serve Christ alone, content with his immortal dowry alone, and imitating the Apostle who says: Our sufficiency is from God, who has made us fit ministers of the New Testament (2 Cor 3:5–6). The condition of the God of the Hebrews and ours is exceedingly different; because he cannot fulfill what he promises, and we loathe to accept it. The liberality of Christ has made us proud against his enticements.

And lest you think I have made these comparisons unfittingly, Paul first applied this likeness of conjugal discipline to us, saying: The woman who is under a husband is bound by the law to her husband while her husband lives: but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of her husband. Therefore, while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress, if she is joined to another man: but if her husband dies, she will not be an adulteress if joined to another (Rom 7:2–3). By this showing that those commit adultery in the spirit who, not first repudiating, and in a manner placing among the dead the author of the Law, then at last join themselves to Christ.

Which saying looks especially to those who have believed from among the Jews, namely, that they themselves should be forgetful of their first superstition. But what need is there for us of either precept in this, for whom, converted to Christ from the gentile state, the God of the Hebrews ought to seem not dead, but not even born? To be sure, to a Jew, if he believes, Adonai ought to seem deceased, but to a gentile an idol: and to each whatever he venerated before he knew Christ. For if, after the divorces of idolatry, anyone worships the God of the Hebrews and Christ alike, he differs in nothing indeed from a woman of worn-out modesty, who, after the death of one husband, has married two.

2. Augustine replied: Hear these things, you whose hearts Christ possesses; and see whether you bear them, except that he himself is your patience. Faustus, full of new honey, rejects the old vinegar, and Paul, full of old vinegar, poured out half, that he might take in the new honey poured over it; not to be preserved, but to be corrupted. For you see that what the apostle Paul says: A servant of Christ Jesus, called an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, is of the new honey. But what follows: Which he had promised before through his Prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:1–3); is of the old vinegar. Who would endure to hear this, unless the same one consoled us, saying: There must be heresies, that those who are approved may be made manifest among you (1 Cor 11:19)? But what need is there to repeat the things already said sufficiently above?

For that the new patch and the old garment, and the new wine and the old wineskins (See Matt 9:16), do not signify the two Testaments, but two lives and two hopes: but that for understanding the two Testaments that likeness was given by the Lord: Therefore every scribe learned in the kingdom of God is like a householder bringing forth from his treasure new things and old (Matt 13:52)—from the things we said before, let him recall who can, or at least let him review who will. For if anyone thinks two hopes are to be held, so that he serves God both on account of earthly felicity and on account of the kingdom of heaven; this hope does not hold that one, and when this one has been disturbed by some tribulation, the man, failing, will lose that one too. Hence is that also: No one can serve two masters. Which he expounded, saying: You cannot serve God and mammon (Matt 6:24).

But the Old Testament, for those who understand rightly, is the prophecy of the New Testament. And so even in that first people the holy Patriarchs and Prophets, who understood what they were doing, or what was done through them, had in the New Testament that hope of eternal salvation: for they pertained to that which they understood and loved; because, although it was not yet revealed, it was already figured. But to the Old pertained those who there coveted nothing more than the temporal promises they thought of, in which they did not understand the eternal things figured and prophesied. But these things have already been said more than enough in our earlier replies.

3. But that is a marvelous impudence, when the sacrilegious and unclean fellowship of the Manicheans does not hesitate to boast itself even the chaste bride of Christ: in which, against the truly chaste members of the holy Church, what does it avail, except that there come to mind, against such men, that apostolic admonition: I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds too be corrupted from the chastity which is in Christ (2 Cor 11:2–3)? For what do these men do, evangelizing to us beyond what we have received, except to corrupt us from the chastity which we keep for Christ, when they blame the law of God under the name of oldness, and praise their own error under the name of newness, as though all oldness were to be fled, or all newness to be sought; when both the apostle John sets the old commandment among things praised (See 1 John 2:7), and the apostle Paul commands that profane novelties of words be avoided (See 1 Tim 6:20)?

You, then, true bride of the true Christ, the Catholic Church, I too will address you according to my measure, such a son and servant of yours as I am, placed in you to dispense food to my fellow servants. Beware always, as you do beware, of the impious vanity of the Manicheans, now known by the peril of your own and proved by my deliverance.

That error once shook me out of your bosom: having had the experience, I fled what I ought not to have experienced. But may even my perils profit you, to whom my deliverance now serves. For unless your true and truthful bridegroom, from whose side you were made, had set in his true blood the forgiveness of sins for me, the abyss of deceit would have swallowed me up, and the serpent, with me made earth, would have devoured me beyond recovery.

Do not be deceived by the name of truth: this you alone have, both in your milk and in your bread; but in that fellowship there is only the name of it, the thing itself is not. And in your grown ones you are indeed secure: but I appeal in you to your little ones, my brothers, sons, and lords, whom you either cherish like eggs under anxious wings, or nourish like infants with milk, fruitful without corruption, virgin mother. These I appeal to in you, your tender offspring, lest they be seduced from you by chattering curiosity; but rather let them anathematize, if anyone evangelizes to them beyond what they received in you (See Gal 1:9): and let them not forsake the true and truthful Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (See Col 2:3), and the great multitude of his sweetness, which he has hidden for those who fear him, but perfected for those who hope in him (See Ps 31:20 (30:20)). But there, how can there be the words of a truthful one, in a deceitful preacher of Christ? Despise their insults: because you are well aware in yourself that you have come to love the promise of eternal life in the gifts of your bridegroom, that is, your bridegroom himself, because he himself is eternal life.

4. But you have not, as they in their folly suppose, been seduced to a strange god, promising fullness of the belly and the land of the Canaanites. For you understand that, even in those very promises, you, already then figured and prophesied, gave birth to the foreknowledge of the saints. Nor be moved by the stone tablet reproached with pitiable wit: because you do not have a stone heart, which those tablets signified in the earlier people. For you are the epistle of the Apostles: Written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart (2 Cor 3:2–3).

At which words those vain men rejoice, thinking the Apostle reproached the dispensation of the Old Testament suited to that time, not understanding that he said this from a Prophet. For these words, which they unskillfully embrace, were foretold, long before they were said and fulfilled through the Apostles, by the Prophets, whom they reject. For the Prophet had said: I will take away from them the heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh (Ezek 11:19).

Let them see whether this is not it: Not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart. For neither there, what was called a heart of flesh, nor here, fleshly tablets, mean this, that we should savor carnally: but because, in comparison with stone, which is without sensation, flesh feels; by the insensibility of stone is signified the heart that does not understand, and by the sensibility of flesh is signified the heart that understands.

You rather laugh at these men, who say that earth and wood and stones have sensation, and live with a more intelligent life, but that flesh lives a more stolid and obtuse one. Hence, not from truth, but from their own vanity, they are compelled to confess that the law written on tablets of stone is cleaner than their treasure on the skins of dead animals.

Or perhaps, because in their little tale they say that stones too are the bones of the princes, do they not hesitate to prefer the skins of lambs to them? Surely, then, that Ark of the Covenant covered the tablets of stone more cleanly than the goatskin covers the manuscript of these men. These things you mercifully laugh at, so that you may commend them as things to be laughed at and fled: for in that stone tablet you now understand, not with a stone heart, what suited that hard people; and yet in it you recognize the rock, your very bridegroom, him of whom Peter speaks: a living stone rejected by men, but chosen by God and honored. To them, then, he was a stone of stumbling and a rock of scandal; but to you the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner (1 Pet 2:4–8). All of which the same apostle Peter expounds, and recalls that all was foretold by the Prophets, from whom these men, condemned, are estranged. Read indeed even that tablet: do not fear, it is plainly your bridegroom's. To others that stone signified hard stolidity: but to you firm stability. By the finger of God those tablets were written (See Exod 31:18): by the finger of God your bridegroom cast out demons (See Luke 11:20): by the finger of God do you drive out the doctrines of lying demons searing the conscience (1 Tim 4:2). From this tablet you repel the adulterer who calls himself the Paraclete, that by a holy name he may seduce you. For on the fiftieth day after the Passover those tablets were given (Exod 20); and on the fiftieth day after the passion of your bridegroom, which that Passover prefigured, the finger of God was given, the Holy Spirit, the promised Paraclete (Acts 2:1–4). Do not, then, dread the tablet, by which things were once sent to you written, which you would now recognize:

only do not be under the law, lest through fear you not fulfill it; but under grace, that in you love may be the fullness of the law. For your bridegroom's friend was reviewing no other tablet, when he said: For: You shall not commit adultery; You shall not kill; You shall not covet; and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The love of neighbor works no evil. Love, therefore, is the fullness of the law (Rom 13:9–10). For there are those two precepts, of the love of God and of the love of neighbor, set out on the individual tablets. This tablet, then, he sent ahead who, when he came, commended to you these two precepts, on which the whole Law and the Prophets hang (Matt 22:37–40).

In the first precept is the chastity of your marriage, in the second the unity of your members: by the former you embrace divinity, by the latter you gather fellowship. These two precepts are the very ten: three pertain to God, and seven to the neighbor. O chaste tablet, in which, by an old figure, that lover and beloved of yours foretold to you a new song, on the ten-stringed psaltery (Ps 92:4 (91:4)): as though for you too he would stretch out his own sinews on the wood, that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh, and the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in you (See Rom 8:3–4). O conjugal tablet, which not without cause the adulteress hates!

5. For now my discourse is to you, deceitful Manichean congregation, wrapped in deceits. So, married to so many elements—or rather a harlot prostituted to demons, and impregnated with sacrilegious vanities—do you dare to tear the Catholic marriage of your Lord with the charge of unchastity? Show us your adulterers, the splendor-holder, the weigher, and Atlas the porter. For the one you say holds the heads of the elements, and suspends the world; the other, with knee fixed and strong shoulders, supports beneath such a mass, surely lest the former fail.

Where are these? Who, if they truly existed, when would they come to you, occupied with so great a business? When would they come in to you, that with your soft hand, and idle, plainly delicate, after so great a labor, you might rub the fingers of the one, the shoulders of the other? But evil demons deceive you, who play the harlot with you, that you may conceive lies and bring forth phantasms. Why, then, do you not reject the tablet of the true God, enemy to your parchments, by which you have come to love so many false gods with a mind wandering through the figments of your thoughts, beside which all the lies of the poets would be found graver and more honorable—or at least this: that among the poets the very profession of falsehood deceives no one, but in your books so great a crowd of deceits corrupts souls childish even in old men, enticed by the name of truth, with pitiable errors, when, itching in the ears, as the Apostle says, and turning their hearing away from the truth, they are turned to fables (See 2 Tim 4:4)?

How, then, would you bear the sound doctrine of those tablets, where the first precept is: Hear, Israel; the Lord your God is one God (Deut 6:4), when, delighted by the names of so many gods, you wallow in the fornication of a most base heart? Do you not recall your love-song, where you describe a supreme king reigning, eternally scepter-bearing, girt with flowery crowns and ruddy of face? Whom, if you loved him alone such, you would have to blush at: for even one husband girt with flowery crowns would displease a chaste wife. Nor can you say that this was so said or so shown by any mystical signification, since Mani is wont to be praised by you especially for no other reason than that, with the coverings of figures removed, he would speak to you the naked and proper truth itself. Properly, then, you sing of God as a scepter-bearing king, crowned with flowers. Let him at least lay aside the scepter, when he is girt with flowery crowns: that softness of luxury does not befit the severity of a royal rod. Add to this, that he is not loved by you alone: for you go on singing, and add twelve ages clothed with flowers, and full of songs, and casting their flowers into the face of the father. Where you also profess those twelve to be certain great gods, three in each of the four tracts, by which that one is surrounded. How you make him measureless, whom you say to be so surrounded, you have never been able to find. You add also innumerable kingdom-dwellers, and hosts of gods, and cohorts of angels: all of which you say God did not found, but begot from his own substance.

6. So you are convicted of worshiping innumerable gods, by not enduring the sound doctrine by which it is taught that one Son was born of one God, and the Holy Spirit of both. Yet these it is not lawful to call not only innumerable, but not even three gods: whose substance is not only one and the same, but whose operation also is one and the same, through that proper one and the same substance; but through the corporeal creature there is also a showing forth of each.

These things you do not understand, you do not grasp: I know, you are full, you are drunk, you are gorged with fabulous sacrilege. Digest sometime what you breathe out, and cease now to overwhelm yourself with such things: meanwhile sing what you sing, and look, if you can, at the disgrace of your fornication. For the doctrine of lying demons invited you to the feigned houses of angels, where a wholesome breeze blows, and to the fields where aromas teem, whose trees and mountains, seas and rivers, flow sweet nectar through all the ages. And you believed and feigned these things in your heart, where, made wanton and dissolute by vain recollections, you are tossed about. For when certain such things are said about the ineffable abundance of spiritual delights, they are surely said in a riddle; so that the mind which is exercised in such things may know that there is something else there to be sought and understood,

whether something of the kind is shown to the bodily senses in corporeal truth, like the fire in the bush (See Exod 3:2), and the serpent from the rod, and the rod from the serpent (See Exod 4:2–4), and the Lord's tunic not divided by his persecutors (See John 19:24), and the anointing of his feet or his head by the service of a woman (See Matt 26:7; John 12:3), and the branches of the multitude going before and following his colt (See Matt 21:7–9):

or whether in the spirit, through images of bodies, they are shown figuratively, whether in a dream or in ecstasy, like the ladder to Jacob (See Gen 28:12), and to Daniel the stone cut without hands and grown into a mountain (See Dan 2:34–35), and to Peter that dish (See Acts 10:11), and to John so many things (See Rev 1):

or whether by speech alone they are figured in the same manner, like the Song of Songs (See Song 1), and that in the Gospel where a householder made a marriage for his son (See Matt 22:2–14), and a certain man had two sons, the frugal and the prodigal (See Luke 15:11–32), and a certain man planted a vineyard, and let it out to husbandmen (See Matt 21:33).

But you preach Mani especially for this, that he came last not to say such things, but rather to resolve them: so that, with the figures of the ancients opened, and his own narratives and disputations brought forth in evident light, he should hide himself in no riddle. You add as the cause of this presumption, that the ancients, in order to see or do or say such figures, knew that this one would come afterward, through whom all things would be made manifest: but he, who knew that no one would come after him, wove his opinions in no allegorical roundabout ways.

What, then, does your affection, sordid with carnal desires, do in the fields and wooded mountains, and the flowery crowns, and the teeming aromas? If they are not riddles of reason, they are phantasms of thought, or the madness of frenzy. But if they are said to be riddles, why do you not flee the adulterer, who promises open truth, in order to entice, and mocks with fabulous deceit those he has enticed? Do not his ministers, themselves wretched and poisoned with such vanities, usually set this bait on their hook from the apostle Paul, where he says: For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part will be done away; and: We see now through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face (1 Cor 13:9–10, 12)? So that, forsooth, the apostle Paul knew in part, and prophesied in part, seeing through a mirror and in a riddle, all of which is to be done away when Mani comes, bringing what is perfect, where truth is seen face to face. O wanton, unclean one, without shame you still prattle these things, you still feed on the winds, you still embrace the idols of your heart!

Have you, then, seen face to face the scepter-bearing king reigning, girt with flowery crowns, and the hosts of gods, and the great splendor-holder, bearing six faces and mouths, and flashing with light; and another king of honor, surrounded by armies of Angels; and another, an adamant warrior-hero, holding a spear in his right hand and a shield in his left; and another, a glorious king driving three wheels, of fire, water, and wind; and the great Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders, and propping it on both sides with his arms, his knee fixed? These and a thousand other monstrosities, have you seen them face to face, or does the doctrine of lying demons sing these to you through the mouths of deceivers, and you do not know it? Woe to you, unhappy one! Behold by what phantasms you are defiled, behold what vanities you lick up in place of truth:

and drunk on serpentine cups, you dare, on account of a stone tablet, to insult the matronly modesty of the spouse of the only Son of God; because she, now not under the tutelage of the Law, but under the mastership of grace, neither proud of works nor broken by terrors, lives by faith and hope and charity, made an Israel in whom there is no guile (See John 1:47), and hearing what is written there: The Lord your God is one God (Deut 6:4): which you, not hearing, have poured out your fornication into so many feigned gods.

7. How would those Tablets not be enemies to you, in which the second precept is: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain (Exod 20:7); since you have set even Christ himself—who, for the sake of cleansing the carnal from carnal vanity, truly arose even to fleshly eyes in the truth of the flesh—in the vanity of deceit? How would the third precept, about the rest of the sabbath, not be against you, who, a soul restless with the illusions of so many figments, are tossed about? These three precepts, how they pertain to the love of God, when will you grasp, when will you savor, when will you love? You are immoderate, and foul, and contentious: you have swelled, you have become vain, you have become worthless, you have exceeded your measure, you have defiled your beauty, you have disturbed your order. Such I was with you, I know you.

How, then, am I now to teach you that these three precepts pertain to the love of God, from whom, and through whom, and in whom are all things (See Rom 11:36)? How do you understand this, when you are not even permitted, by the detestable perversity of your error, to know and observe those seven which pertain to the love of neighbor, by which the fellowship of human life is held together?

Among which the first commandment is: Honor your father and your mother (Exod 20:12): which Paul too recalls as the first commandment with a promise, himself likewise enjoining the same (See Eph 6:2). But you have learned, by demonic teaching, to reckon your parents enemies, because they bound you in flesh through intercourse, and in this way surely laid unclean fetters on your god. Hence too you violate the precept that follows, which is: You shall not commit adultery (Exod 20:14), in such a way that in marriage you especially detest this, that children are procreated; and so, while your Hearers beware lest the women with whom they mingle conceive, you make them even adulterers of their own wives.

For they take them by the law of marriage, the tablets proclaiming it to be for the sake of procreating children: but by your law, fearing lest they affect a particle of their god with the filth of the flesh, they mingle with the women by a shameless union only to satisfy lust; but they take up children unwillingly, for the sake of which alone marriages are to be joined. How, then, do you not forbid marriage—which the Apostle foretold of you so long before (1 Tim 4:3)—when you try to take away from marriage that from which marriage exists? With this taken away, the husbands will be basely lovers; the wives, harlots; the bridal chambers, brothels; the fathers-in-law, panderers.

And by this you do not keep even that precept which is: You shall not kill (Exod 20:13), from the perversity of the same error. For while you fear lest a member of your god be bound in flesh, you do not give bread to the hungry: here dreading a false murder, there you perpetrate a true one. And so, if you run into a starving man who could die unless you help him by holding out food; you will now be held a murderer either by the law of God, if you do not give it; or by the law of Mani, if you do give it.

What? The rest of the precepts of the Decalogue, how will you keep them? Will you abstain from theft, so that some man or other should devour bread, or any food, to be slaughtered in his bowels, rather than that you, if you could, should snatch it from him, and run to the workshop of the belly of your Elect, so that by your theft your god might not fall into a heavier bond, and might be rescued from that into which it had fallen? Further, if you are caught in that same theft; will you not swear by your very god that you did not take it? For what will such a god do to you, to whom you say: I have sworn falsely by you, but for you; unless you wanted me to bring destruction on myself, while I rendered you honor?

Thus you will despise that commandment of the Law too: You shall not bear false witness, on account of the members of your god, so that you free them from their fetters not only by false witness, but even by a false oath.

And now what follows: You shall not covet your neighbor's wife (Exod 20:16–17), ought to be fulfilled in you: and this one alone I see that you are compelled by no necessity of your error to violate. But if it is wrong to covet another's wife, consider what it is to set oneself before others to be coveted: and recall your handsome gods and beautiful goddesses, offering themselves to be ardently coveted, the former by the female princes of darkness, the latter by the males: so that, roused into the lust of enjoying, and burning with longing for their embraces, they may rescue from them that god of yours fettered everywhere, and needing such great shamefulness of his own that he may be freed.

For as to not coveting a neighbor's property, which is the last commandment of the Decalogue, whence can you do it, wretched one? Does not your very god lie to you that he is fashioning for himself new ages in a foreign land, where, after a false victory, you may swell with a false triumph? Which, when you now desire it with insane vanity, and believe that same land of the race of darkness to be joined by the closest neighborhood to your substance, you surely covet a neighbor's property.

Rightly is the tablet an enemy to you, containing such good commandments much contrary to your error. For those three which pertain to the love of God, you are wholly ignorant of, you wholly do not keep: but these seven by which human fellowship is not harmed, if you ever keep them, you are either restrained by shame, lest you be confounded among men; or broken by fear, lest you be punished by public laws; or you shudder at the evil deed by some good habit; or by the very natural law you perceive that you do unjustly to another what you do not want done to yourself by another: yet you feel how greatly your error compels you to go to the contrary, both when you follow it and when you do not follow it, since you either do this which you do not want to suffer, or do not do it for the reason that you do not want to suffer it.

8. But this true bride of Christ, whom you insult, with most impudent face, about the stone tablet, understands what difference there is between the letter and the spirit (See 2 Cor 3:6), which two are also called, in another way, the Law and grace: and now serving God not in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit (See Rom 7:6), she is now not under the law, but under grace. For she is not blinded by being litigious; but, meek, she attends to the words of the Apostle, that she may understand what he calls the law, under which he no longer wants us to be, because it was set for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made (Gal 3:19): and because it entered in for this, that the offense might abound; but where the offense abounded, grace superabounded (Rom 5:20).

Nor for this reason, however, does she call that same law sin, because without grace it does not give life; for it rather increases guilt with transgression added: For where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15); and therefore through itself, when it is letter alone without spirit, that is, law without grace, it only makes men guilty: but she sets before herself what those who understand less might think, and opens what she means, when she says: What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Far be it: but I did not know sin except through the law. For I did not know covetousness, unless the law said: You shall not covet. So sin, taking occasion, deceived me through the commandment, and through it killed me. And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did then that which is good become death to me? Far be it: but sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good (Rom 7:7, 11–13).

These things she understands, whom you insult; because, groaning, she asks, because, humble, she seeks, because, meek, she knocks: and so she sees that the law is not reproached, when it is said: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6); just as knowledge is not reproached, when it is said: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. For surely he himself had said: We know that we all have knowledge; and then he adds: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Cor 8:1). Why, then, did he himself have whereby to be puffed up, except because, with love, knowledge not only does not puff up, but even strengthens?

So the letter with the spirit, and the law with grace, is no longer called letter and law in that way in which, through itself, it kills with the offense abounding. For thus the law was called also the strength of sin (See 1 Cor 15:56), when it increases its noxious delight, through severe prohibition. Nor yet even so is it evil: but sin, that it might appear sin, worked death through what is good. So many things are noxious to some, although they are not evil. For you too, when your eyes hurt, close the windows even against your god the sun.

This bride of Christ, then, now dead to the law, that is, to sin, which is made more abundant by the prohibition of the law, when the law without grace commands but does not help: dead, then, to such a law, that she may be another's who rose from the dead, distinguishes these things without injury to the law, lest she commit sacrilege against its author:

which you do against him whom you do not understand to be the author of the good; when you hear the Apostle saying: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Behold, the author of the good is he who seems to you one of the princes of darkness. Attend to the truth, it strikes your eyes. Behold, the apostle Paul says: The law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

Behold, whose author is he who sent ahead that tablet, which in your folly you deride, in the dispensation of a great mystery. For the same law, which was given through Moses, became grace and truth through Jesus Christ (See John 1:17), when the spirit was added to the letter, that the righteousness of the law might begin to be fulfilled, which, unfulfilled, made men guilty even by transgression. For it is not that one law is holy and just and good, and another that through which sin works death, to which we ought to die, that we may be another's who rose from the dead: but it is one and the same. Behold, follow on, read. But sin, he says, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good, that the sinner, or sin, might become beyond measure through the commandment. Deaf, blind one, hear, see. Through what is good, he says, it worked death in me.

Therefore the law is always good; whether it harms those empty of grace, or profits those full of grace, it is always good: just as the sun is always good, because every creature of God is good (See 1 Tim 4:4), whether it harms aching eyes, or soothes healthy ones. Accordingly, what health of the eyes is for seeing the sun, this grace is for minds for fulfilling the law. And just as healthy eyes do not die to the delight of the sun, but to those harsh strokes of the rays, by which, beaten back, they were driven into denser darkness: so the soul, made whole through the love of the spirit, is said to be dead, not to the righteousness of the law, but to that guilt and transgression which the law, through the letter, when grace was lacking, made. And so both are said of it: both: The law is good, if one uses it lawfully; and what follows: Knowing this, that the law is not set for the just (See 1 Tim 1:8–9); because he has no need of the terrifying letter whom righteousness itself delights.

9. This bride of Christ, rejoicing in the hope of her full salvation, wishes for you too a good conversion from fables to truth, lest, dreading Adonai as though an adulterer, you remain with the most cunning adulterer, the serpent. For "Adonai" is a Hebrew word, and is interpreted "Lord," in that manner in which God alone is called Lord: just as "latria," which is a Greek word, is interpreted "service," not any service whatever, but that by which God alone is served: just as "Amen" is interpreted "true," not anywhere and in any way, but by a mystical religion. And if it be asked of you whence you too have these words; besides the Hebrew writings, or those which are from the Hebrew, you find none. The Church of Christ, then, does not fear the casting of these names against it: it understands, and loves; nor does it care for the unskilled insulter: and the things it does not yet understand, it believes to be such as some it has experienced were, which, before being understood, were so.

Let anyone cast at her that she has come to love Emmanuel; she laughs at the ignorance of that man, she embraces the truth of this name. Let him cast at her that she has loved the Messiah; she repels the slain adversary, she holds the anointed master. So she desires that you too be healed of vain errors, and built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets (See Eph 2:20).

Whom you call a Hippocentaur, not knowing what you say, nor attending to what your fable has made for you, when from part of your god and part of the land of darkness you fashioned a false world in your heart. Is not he, then, a Hippocentaur, half-beast and half-god? Truly, since he is not even to be called a Hippocentaur. But what he is, attend you, and blush and grow gentle, that you may shudder at your corruption by the adulterer serpent: whose cunning, if you did not think it was to be believed in Moses, you ought to have guarded against in Paul,

who, wishing to present the true Church a chaste virgin to Christ, says: I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity which is in Christ (2 Cor 11:2–3). Although you heard this, you have nonetheless so lost your wits, and been made mad by his poisoned incantations, that, while the same serpent persuaded many other heresies of one thing and another, to you he persuaded even that he himself is Christ. Further, if many wander, entangled in his various and manifold deceits, who yet confess this admonition of the Apostle to be true: how greatly are you adulterated, how far off prostituted, you who hold for Christ the very one by whom the Apostle cries out that Eve, the bride of Christ, was seduced and corrupted, so that by such an admonition he might guard the virgin bride from him for Christ? He has darkened your heart, who wallows with you in the phantasms of luminous groves. What are they, where are they, whence are they, his faithful promises? O drunken one, but not from wine (See Isa 51:21)!

10. Surely you have reviled, with sacrilegious impudence, the God of the Prophets, because, though the Jews themselves serve him, he has not furnished what he promised. Nor indeed did you say what he promised and did not furnish, lest there you be convicted either of something already furnished which you do not understand, or of something still to come which you do not believe. To you what has been promised and presented, whence faith might be made to you that you would receive triumphs of new ages over the land of darkness?

If you bring forth some prophets in whom we may read that future Manicheans were foretold with praise, so that on this very account you might think something already furnished to you, because we see that you exist; you must first prove that Mani himself did not feign prophets for you, who wished you to believe him. For he does not think a lie base: or can he doubt to show false prophets in sheep's clothing, who, praising Christ, asserts that he showed false scars in his members?

But I read that you were plainly foretold, not only by the prophets sometimes more obscurely, but even by the Apostle more expressly. But see how: The Spirit, he says, says manifestly, that in the last times some will withdraw from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and to doctrines of demons in the hypocrisy of liars, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and by those who have known the truth: for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be cast away which is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:1–4). How these things have been fulfilled in you both touches, more clearly than light, the eyes of all who have known you, and we have shown above according to the time.

11. But this woman, whom apostolic teaching, presenting a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ, admonishes to beware of the deceit of the serpent by which you were corrupted, recognizes the God of the Prophets, the true God, her own God: in his last promise she securely believes, whose so great promises she already holds fulfilled; nor does anyone say that the Prophets whom she asserts to be in the books of the Jews were feigned for the present time. For what more incredible was being promised than that which was said to Abraham: In your seed all the nations will be blessed (Gen 22:18). And what do we now hold more surely furnished?

That, surely, is his last promise, which the prophet briefly recalls thus: Blessed are they who dwell in your house; for ever and ever they will praise you (Ps 84:4 (83:5)). For with all want ended, and the last enemy, death, destroyed (See 1 Cor 15:26), the perpetual praise of God will be the occupation of those at rest: to which no one will any longer come, from which no one will any longer depart.

Which the prophet recalls elsewhere thus: Praise the Lord, Jerusalem; praise your God, Zion: for he has strengthened the bars of your gates, he has blessed your sons within you (Ps 147:12–13 (147:1–2)). With the gates closed, none will enter, none will go out. Which the bridegroom himself too says in the Gospel, that to the foolish virgins, even knocking, he will not open (See Matt 25:12).

This Jerusalem, the holy Church, the bride of Christ, is described more copiously and richly in the Apocalypse of John. Let the chaste virgin not believe this prophetic promise, if she does not already hold what was promised her, through that same prophecy, to be in this time to come: Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people, and your father's house; for the king has desired your beauty, for he himself is your God, and the daughters of Tyre will adore him with gifts: the rich of the people will entreat your face. All the glory of the king's daughter is within, in golden fringes, clothed about with varied things: virgins will be brought to the king after her, her companions will be brought to you, in joy and exultation they will be led into the king's temple. In place of your fathers, sons are born to you, you will set them princes over all the earth: they will be mindful of your name in every progeny and generation, therefore the peoples will confess to you forever and unto age upon age (Ps 45:10–17 (44:11–18)).

But you, unhappy one, corrupted by the serpent, when do you even try to think what is the beauty of the king's daughter within? For it is the chastity of the mind, where you have been violated, so that your eyes were opened to loving and adoring the sun and the moon; and so, by the just judgment of God, you were estranged from the tree of life, which is eternal and inner wisdom; and you called and thought nothing else truth and wisdom, except this light, which, drawn in through ill-opened eyes, and increased immeasurably, and varied manifoldly through fabulous images, you turned over in an unchaste mind. These are your fornications, too greatly to be abominated.

And yet patiently consider them, and return to me, says the Truth. Return to me, and you will be cleansed, you will be restored, if you are confounded at yourself, and poured back into me. Hear this, this the true Truth says, which neither fought with deceptive forms against the race of darkness, nor redeemed you with deceitful blood.

1. Faustus said: Why do you not accept Moses, since Christ says: Moses wrote about me; and: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also (John 5:46)?

I, for my part, would wish that not only Moses had written about Christ, but all the Prophets too, both of the Jews and of the gentiles. For what would this harm our faith, or what would it not rather profit, if we gathered from everywhere fitting and suitable testimonies to our God? Since it would even then be free for us, with hatred and execration of their superstition remaining, to excerpt from those same men only the prophecies about Christ: so that it cannot be contrary to me, if Moses too, although he is a stranger to Christ, yet seems to have written something about Christ. Or would not any man wish to gather a flower from all thorns, fruit from every herb, honey from all flies: although we use neither flies, nor grass, for food, nor thorns for the ornament of a crown? Or would anyone be unwilling that a pearl should be born in every deep, gems in all lands, fruits in all woods? Or if to eat fish from the sea does not harm, while to drink water harms, and men know how, having taken what is useful, to reject what is hostile; would it not be free for us, with the rite of any religion condemned, if it were useless to us, to accept from it only the prophecies about Christ? Nor would this profit their errors for capturing us and reducing us into servitude of their own: because not even the unclean spirits, when they openly and undissemblingly confessed Jesus to be the Son of God (See Matt 8:29), profited so as to be the less hateful to us. Wherefore, if Moses too, according to this testimony, wrote something about Christ, I will accept it: yet so that it profit him in no way for taking me captive into his own law, which I see to differ in nothing from paganism. Wherefore there is nothing at all in your supposing that, if this is proved, I shall in no way rejoice that every spirit prophesied about Christ.

2. To you indeed I will render sufficient thanks, if, just as you show that Christ testified that Moses wrote about him, so you also teach this: what those things are which he wrote. For I, having searched his Scriptures, as I was bidden, found no prophecies about Christ there; either because there are none, or because I myself could not understand. Hence, set in a great heat, I was compelled by reason to one of two things: either to pronounce this passage false, or Jesus a liar. But that indeed was foreign to piety, to reckon God to have lied. It seemed more right, then, to ascribe falsehood to the writers, than a lie to the author of truth. Since I heard him too saying that all who came before him were thieves and robbers (See John 10:8): by which sentence I see Moses struck first of all. To this, when, as he spoke of his majesty, where he calls himself the light of the world, the Jews indignantly cried out against him: Because you testify about yourself, your testimony is not true: I do not see him going on, where the place most demanded it, to say that Moses prophesied about him; but, as though truly a stranger, and having no testimony from their fathers, he answered: Surely in your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who testifies about myself; and the Father who sent me testifies about me (See John 8:13, 17–18). Recalling to them that which, said from heaven, all had heard: This is my most beloved Son; believe him (Matt 3:17; Luke 9:35). Moreover, this too does not seem verisimilar to me, that the Jews could keep silent, when Christ said that Moses wrote about him, without at once, malignant and crafty as they were, asking what that was which he thought had been written about him by Moses. But this their all-around silence too signifies no less that Jesus said no such thing.

3. Although, then, these things too seem no small matter for confirming the suspicion of falsehood about that passage, yet I am held more by this, that, having searched, as I said, all the writing of Moses, I found no prophecies about Christ there. Now, however, having found you a reader of better understanding, I believe I shall obtain something, and I confess I shall give thanks, if you frustrate by no ill will the hope of progress and teaching which the confidence of your rebuke promises me; but teach me, if there is anything that has perhaps escaped me in reading, recorded about God and about our Lord in the writing of Moses. And do not say, I beg, as the unskilled are wont, that this very thing ought to be enough for faith, that Christ said Moses wrote about him. For I do not want you now to look at me, whom my profession has made bound to believe, so that I cannot but believe him whom I follow; but suppose we are dealing with a Jew, suppose with a gentile: when we have said to them, Moses wrote about Christ, they will seek proofs—what shall we offer? Shall we be able to say, Christ said this, in whom they still in no way believe? Surely it will be necessary for us to show them what he wrote.

4. What, then, shall we show? That which you are wont to, where his God speaks to Moses, saying: I will raise up for them a Prophet from among their brothers like you (Deut 18:15, 18)? But that this in no way regards Christ neither escapes the Jew, nor is it expedient for us to believe so: because Christ is not a prophet, nor a prophet like Moses; since the former was a man, the latter God; the former a sinner, the latter holy; the former born of intercourse, the latter, according to you, of a virgin, but according to me not even of a virgin; the former, with his God offended, is killed on the mountain (See Deut 34:5), the latter, most pleasing to the Father, suffers by his own will (See John 10:18). How, then, will he himself be a prophet like Moses? Surely at once the Jew will either deride us as unskilled, or convict us as liars.

5. Or shall we offer him that which you likewise are wont to bring in: They will see their life hanging, and will not believe their life (Deut 28:66)? To which you indeed add, "on wood"; for it is not so written. But to prove that this too in no way pertains to Christ, nothing is so ready to hand. For among the savage curses which he uttered against his own people, if they should fall away from his law, he added this too, saying that they would be in the captivity of their enemies, and would meditate their own end day and night, so that they would not even have confidence in their own life, which had been granted them by the victors: because it would hang from uncertainty, always fearful and anxious under the imminence of swords. Not even this, then, pertains to Christ: other things are to be sought. For that one indeed I would scarcely believe you think said of Christ, that everyone is cursed who hangs on wood (Deut 21:23): or that other, that the prophet or prince of the people is to be killed, who would wish to turn them away from their God, or to break any of the commandments (See Deut 13:5). Which Christ I cannot indeed plainly deny to have done. But you, on the contrary, cannot plainly confess these things to be written of him, lest, if this be so, we begin again to ask in what spirit Moses prophesied, so as either to curse Christ, or to order him killed. For if he had the Spirit of God, he did not say these things of Christ: if he said these things of Christ, he did not have the Spirit of God. For neither would the divine Spirit either curse Christ, or order him to be killed. To clear Moses, then, of this charge, you must confess that he did not write even these things of Christ. But if he did not write these of Christ, either you will give others, or there will be none. If there were none, neither could Christ assert what is nowhere. So if Christ in no way asserted this, that passage will be established to be false.

6. But neither is that verisimilar which follows: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also (John 5:46). Because the tradition of Moses and of Christ is exceedingly unlike and far otherwise, so that if the Jews believed one of them, they would necessarily resist the other. For Moses indeed teaches, above all else, that one must abstain from all work on the sabbath, and brings in this as the reason of this religion, that God, when he was fashioning the world and all things in it, devoted six days to the work, but on the seventh rested, which is the sabbath: and therefore blessed it, that is, sanctified it, as the harbor of his tranquillity, and gave a law besides, that whoever broke it should be killed (See Exod 20:8–11; 31:13–17). This, then, the Jews vehemently believed, Moses teaching it: and therefore they thought they ought not even lend their ears to Christ, asserting that God always works, and has set himself no day of rest, because he is a continual and untiring power; and that he himself therefore ought never to rest, not even on the sabbaths: For my Father, he says, always works, and I must work (John 5:17; 9:4).

Likewise Moses counts the circumcision of the flesh among things sacred and pleasing to God, and orders every male to be circumcised in the flesh of their foreskin: and teaches that this is a necessary sign of that covenant which his God arranged with Abraham, and affirms that whoever of the men should not bear this, that one would be exterminated from his tribe, and would not come into the fellowship of the inheritance which was promised to Abraham and his seed (Gen 17:9–14). And this too the Jews strongly believed, Moses asserting it: and therefore they could not have faith in Christ, who weakened these things, and besides asserted that he who was circumcised would be made doubly a son of Gehenna (See Matt 23:15).

Likewise Moses makes an anxious distinction of carnal foods, and sits as a disputant among fish and birds and quadrupeds after the manner of a glutton; and orders some indeed to be licked up as clean, but others not even to be touched as unclean: among which, in part, he censures the pig and the hare, and whatever among fish lacks scales, or among quadrupeds does not have a cloven hoof, nor chews the cud (See Deut 14:3–20). And these things too the Jews stoutly believed, Moses writing them: and therefore they could not now believe Christ, who taught an indifference of foods, and indeed removed all things entirely from his own disciples, but to the worldly commonly granted all things that could be eaten, and asserted that nothing entering into the mouth defiled them; because the things which proceed shamelessly from the mouth are alone what defile a man (See Matt 15:11–20). That Jesus laid down these and many other things contrary to Moses, there is no one who does not know.

7. Since to run through these one by one is long, I will show one for many, that is, that the greatest part of the Christian heresies, and—what is obvious—the Catholics take no care to keep any of the things which Moses writes. Which very thing, if it does not descend from some error, but from that true tradition of Christ and of his disciples, you must by all means confess that Jesus and Moses taught things mutually contrary to each other: and therefore that Christ was not believed by the Jews, because they wished to show faith to Moses. To what end, then, will it not be false, that Jesus said to them: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also (John 5:46): when it is far manifest that they the more did not believe Jesus, because they believed Moses; but could have had faith in Christ, if they had ceased to believe Moses? Yet you, as I said, teach us, I beg, where Moses wrote anything about Christ.

8. At other times you say: If you are a Christian, believe Christ when he says that Moses wrote about him. But if you do not believe, you are not a Christian. This reply is always silly and feeble, of those who have nothing to show. How much better, then, would you have done, if you simply confessed the same? And yet you could indeed say this to me, whom you know to be under necessity to believe for the sake of the religion by which I serve Christ: although this very thing is still in question, whether this too is a testimony of Christ, so that it ought to be believed absolutely; or of a writer, so that it must be examined carefully. Nor, if we do not believe falsehoods, do we hereby offend Christ, but the falsifiers. Yet somehow this will be able to be borne, when set against Christians:

but what shall we do about those whom I mentioned, namely the Jew and the gentile, to whom we cannot say: If you are a Christian, believe; if you do not believe, you are not a Christian? Although you would not most rightly say this even to a Christian, since Christ did not spurn the apostle Thomas doubting about him; but, that he might heal the wounds of his mind, showed the scars of his body; nor did he say: If you are a disciple, believe; if you do not believe, you are not a disciple. You may say this to me, not doubting about Christ, but about the sentence, whether it is his, or introduced. But, you say, he calls more blessed those who have not seen and have believed (See John 20:27, 29). If you think this was said so that we should believe anything without reason and judgment; be you the more blessed without sense, I shall be content to have heard myself blessed with reason.

9. Augustine replied: Cunningly indeed you say you are prepared, if you find any prophecies about Christ in the books of Moses, to take them up, as if a fish from the sea, while you reject the very water from which the fish is taken. But because everything Moses wrote is about Christ, that is, pertains wholly to Christ, whether because it foretells him by figures of things either done or said, or because it commends his grace and glory; you, who believed in a fabricated and deceitful Christ from the writings of Mani, so refuse to believe Moses, just as you also refuse to eat a fish. But this is the difference, that you pursue Moses with hostility, but praise the fish deceitfully. For if to eat a fish from the sea does not harm, as you yourself said, why do you so proclaim it harmful, that if no other food turns up, you would be consumed by hunger first, rather than feed on a fish? What? If all flesh is unclean, as you say, and in all water and every herb is held that wretched life of your god, which must be purified through your foods; your detestable superstition compels you both to throw away the fish you praised, and to drink sea water and eat the thorns you blamed.

But as for the fact that you even compared the servant of God to demons, so that, such as they were when they confessed Christ (See Matt 8:29), such also this one is to be accepted if anything can be found in his books which preaches Christ; he indeed does not disdain the reproach of his Lord. For if the householder was called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household! (See Matt 10:25) But do you see from whom you learned these things—surely more wicked than those who so reviled the Lord. For they did not believe him to be Christ, and therefore thought him deceitful: but you do not think any teaching truthful, except that which dares to proclaim Christ deceitful.

10. But whence does the law of Moses seem to you to differ in nothing from paganism? Is it because it commends a temple, a sacrifice, an altar, and a priest? But all these names are found in the New Testament too. Destroy this temple, he says, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19); and: When you offer your gift at the altar (Matt 5:24); and: Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for yourself the sacrifice which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them (Matt 8:4). And of what these were figures, the Lord himself in part shows, when he compares the temple of his body to that temple; in part we learn from apostolic teaching: For the temple of God is holy, says the Apostle, which you are (1 Cor 3:17); and: I beseech you, therefore, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God (Rom 12:1); and the rest of this kind. Accordingly all those things were figures of us (1 Cor 10:6), as he likewise says, and it must often be recalled: because they were shown forth not to demons, but to the one true God, who made heaven and earth; not as though he needed such things, but as one distinguishing the times, and commanding the present things, through which he might signify the future.

But you, who, in order to seduce and deceive the simple and imperfect Christians, feign that you detest paganism, produce for us the authority of Christian books, in which you are commanded to worship and adore the sun and the moon. Your error, then, is rather like paganism; since you do not even worship Christ, but, under the name of Christ, some thing or other which you have feigned for yourselves by lying, and you adore gods either visible in this conspicuous heaven, or others, innumerable and fabricated. To which phantasms, as though vain and empty images, you have built not little shrines, but made your hearts temples.

11. You demand of me that I show what things Moses wrote about Christ. Many indeed have already been demonstrated above; but who could demonstrate all? Especially since, if I recall certain things, this perverse man seems prepared either to try to pervert them into another sense; or, if he be overwhelmed by the evidence of clearer truth, to say that he takes those things as though catching a sweet fish from the salt sea: and not on that account ought he be compelled to the whole Scripture of Moses, as to drinking sea water. Wherefore I think it suffices for this work, that I show that those very things which he plucked out as to be reproached from the Scripture of the Hebrew law pertain to the preaching of Christ, if they are rightly understood: from which it may sufficiently appear that the rest much more, whether pronounced at once, or diligently and truthfully searched out, suit the Christian faith; if the things which the enemy casts as to be derided and condemned, convict him by those very things as to be condemned by Christian truth. Wherefore, O man full of all deceit, since the Lord in the Gospel said: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote about me (John 5:46); there is no reason for you to feign yourself set in a great heat, and to seem compelled to one of two things, either to pronounce this passage false, or Jesus a liar. For just as this passage is true, so also Jesus is truthful. "It seemed more right," you say, "to ascribe falsehood to the writers, than a lie to the author of truth."

Do you so believe Christ the author of truth, whom you proclaim a feigner of flesh, and of death, and of wounds, and of scars? I want you to show me whence you learned that Christ is the author of truth, if you dare to ascribe falsehood to those who wrote about him, whose authority, commended and confirmed by recent memory, flowed out to posterity. For you did not see Christ, or how he spoke with you as with the Apostles, or call you from heaven, as he did Saul (See Acts 9:3–7). What can we think about him, what believe, except what the Scripture testifies? Further, if the Gospel, spread abroad and known to all the nations, and from the beginning of the preaching of the name of Christ set in all the Churches in so great a height of holiness, is a liar; what Scripture can be brought forth, to which faith about Christ is to be given? What will you be able to bring forth written, which he who is unwilling to believe this would not say is fabricated, if so great a knowledge of the Gospel comes into doubt?

12. Then you add that you yourself heard him saying that all who came before him were thieves and robbers (See John 10:8). Whence did you hear him saying this, except from the Gospel? But if this, which you so believe from the Gospel that you say you heard it as though from the mouth of the Lord, another should contend to be false, and deny that Christ said this; where will you go? What will you do? Will you not proclaim the evangelical authority with all the strength you can? Wretched man, there is written what you are unwilling to believe, where you learned what you so believe that you say you heard it from Christ himself. Behold, we believe both, because we believe the holy Gospel, where both are written: both that Moses wrote about Christ, and that all who came before Christ were thieves and robbers. For he wishes "came" to be understood thus, because they were not sent: for those who were sent, like Moses and the holy Prophets, came not before him, but with him; because they did not wish to precede him through pride, but humbly bore him speaking through them.

You, however, who understand these words of the Lord in this way, by your own interpretation admit plainly enough that you have no prophets who prophesied that Christ would come, and so you have fashioned him for yourselves just as you wished. For suppose there are some of yours—who deserve no credence for the very reason that they are produced by none but you—suppose, I say, there are some whom you would dare to say prophesied that Christ would come in false flesh, suffer a false death, and offer false scars to his doubting disciples: I will not dwell on how detestable and to be shunned such people are by this very fact, and how they cannot be truthful, for whom a lying Christ is acceptable. Leaving that aside, then, as I had begun to say, on this interpretation of yours they were thieves and robbers, since they came before Christ, predicting in whatever manner that he would come. Moreover, if that interpretation is true, by which those are said to have come before Christ who refused to come with Christ—that is, with the Word of God—but brought their lies to men when God had not sent them, then you yourselves, even though you were born into this world after Christ's passion and resurrection, are thieves and robbers; for before he himself enlightened you to preach his truth, you wished to come before him in order to flaunt your deceit.

13. But in that passage where the Jews said to him, You bear witness to yourself; your testimony is not true (Jn 8:13), it is no wonder that you do not see him going on to say that Moses had prophesied about him, for you do not have the devout eye by which you could see this. For consider his very reply to them, namely: In your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who bears witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness to me (Jn 8:17–18). To those who understand rightly, what else does this convey but that the number of witnesses was, in the law, consecrated and commended by the prophetic Spirit, so that in this way too there might be foretold the coming revelation of the Father and the Son, whose Spirit, in that inseparable Trinity, is the Holy Spirit? This is why it is written: On the word of two or three witnesses shall every word stand (Deut 19:15). Otherwise even a single witness very often speaks the truth, and several very often lie; and at the beginning of the faith of the gentiles, one apostle preaching the Gospel was believed rather than the erring peoples by whom he himself was being persecuted. Not in vain, then, was this number of witnesses in a manner consecrated; and when the Lord made this reply, by that very fact too he wished it to be understood that Moses had prophesied about him.

Or do you perhaps raise a quibble from the fact that he said not "in the law of God" but in your law it is written? Who would not recognize here the usual idiom of the Scriptures? For he said in your law meaning "given to you," just as the Apostle calls it his gospel, which nonetheless he testifies that he received not from man but through the revelation of Jesus Christ (See 2 Tim 2:8; Gal 1:11–12). Or will you say that Christ denied that he had God as Father wherever he said not "our Father" but your Father (See Mt 6:26, 32)? And as for that voice you mentioned, brought down from heaven, This is my most beloved Son; believe him (Mt 3:17; 17:5)—because you did not hear it, do not believe him! But if you believe because you found it in the holy Scriptures, then there too is that other saying which you refuse to believe, that Moses wrote about Christ;

there too are many other things to which you likewise deny credence. And you do not fear, wretches, that in this way some profane person might say that this voice did not sound from heaven at all. Just as you argue, against the salvation of the human race that is conferred on all nations by the authority of the Gospel—and indeed to your own ruin—when you say that Christ's statement that Moses wrote about him is not to be believed, because "if he had said this, the Jews could not have kept silent, but at once, being malicious and crafty as they were, would have asked what that thing might be which he supposed Moses had written about him"—so too that vain and lost person might say: "If that voice had sounded from heaven, would not all the Jews who heard it have believed?" Why then do you not consider, you madmen, that just as it could happen that even after that heavenly voice the hard unbelief of the Jews remained, so it could happen that, when Christ said Moses had written about him, in their malicious cunning they feared to hear that by which they would be refuted, and so did not ask at all what Moses had written about him?

14. But Faustus too senses that this line of argument is not only sacrilegious against the holiness of the Gospel but also feeble and weak; and so he directs his effort rather to this point, and says he is the more firmly persuaded because, having searched through all the writing of Moses, he found no prophecies about Christ there. To him I quickly reply that he does not understand; and if anyone asks why he does not understand, I will answer: because he reads with a hostile mind, with an opposed mind; because he does not search in order to know, but thinks he knows what he does not know. This presumption of swollen arrogance either closes the eye of the heart, so that it does not see at all, or distorts it, so that it sees perversely and approves or disapproves one thing for another. "You teach me," he says, "what it is that may perhaps have escaped me in my reading concerning our God and Lord, recorded in the writing of Moses." And here too let me quickly answer: It all escaped you, because he wrote it all about Christ. But since we cannot discuss and treat it all, I will reserve for you in this work, if I can with the Lord's help, what I said above: namely, that the very passages you select to censure I will show to have been written about Christ.

Indeed, you even ask that I not say, "as the unlearned are wont to, that this in itself ought to suffice for faith, namely, that Christ said Moses wrote about him." Now if I do say this, I say it not as one unlearned but as a believer; yet that this does not avail to convince a gentile or a Jew, I too admit. But that against you, who in whatever manner glory in the Christian name, it is sufficiently apt and powerful, you yourself—though you long shuffled about—were nonetheless forced to confess, saying: "For do not now look to me, whom my profession has bound to believe, so that I cannot but believe him whom I follow; but suppose we are dealing with a Jew, suppose with a gentile."

By these words you showed that you, for the present—the one with whom I now have to do—since your profession has bound you to believe, are sufficiently convicted that Moses wrote about Christ; for that Christ himself said this is written in the Gospel, whose so illustrious and holy authority you do not dare to undermine. For even when you do dare to do so indirectly, pressed by the straits of your difficulty and seeing what great ruin overwhelms you when you are told that there is no writing from which you can demand belief about the deeds and words of Christ if you think the Gospel, so holy and so widely and most fully known, is not to be believed—and fearing that, with the cloak of the Christian name lost, your naked emptiness will remain to be spat upon and detested by all—you try again to gather up your wounded self, and you say that by these words of the Gospel your profession has already bound you to believe.

And so, for the present, the one with whom I am now dealing—I hold you, I strike you, I slay you; that is, your error and your deceit—and I compel you to confess that Moses wrote about Christ, since it is read in the Gospel that Christ said this, which gospel your profession has bound you to believe. But if I should have to dispute with a Jew or a gentile, I have already shown above in what ways, according to my own small strength, I think I ought to proceed.

15. Nor do I deny that the following was foretold of Christ—the very thing you selected as easy to refute—where God speaks to Moses, saying: I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like you (Deut 18:15, 18). Nor do your polished and witty antitheses, with which you wished as it were to color and paint your muddy discourse, deter me in any way from this truth of faith. For in comparing Christ and Moses, and desiring to show them dissimilar, so that on this account what is written—I will raise up for them a prophet like you—might seem not to be understood of Christ, you set up against yourself many contraries: that the one was a man, the other God; the one a sinner, the other holy; the one born of sexual union, the other (according to us) of a virgin, but (according to you) not even of a virgin; the one slain on a mountain because he offended God, the other suffering by his own will, well-pleasing to the Father.

As if, when something is said to be similar, it were to be understood as similar in every part and in every way! For not only are things of one and the same nature said to be similar to one another—as twin men, or sons to their parents, or all men to all men, who insofar as they are men are surely similar (something very easy to observe in the other animals too, or in trees, as an olive is said to be similar to an olive, a laurel to a laurel)—but also many things of unlike nature are, and are said to be, similar, as the wild olive to the olive, and spelt to wheat.

I am still speaking of things close at hand and akin. For what is so far distant from the Son of God, through whom all things were made (See Jn 1:3), as cattle and stone? And yet in the Gospel one reads, Behold the Lamb of God (See Jn 1:29), and in the Apostle, and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4)—which no one would rightly say if he bore no likeness whatever to these things. What wonder, then, if Christ did not disdain to be made like Moses, when he was made like the sheep which, in foretelling him, God commanded through Moses himself to be eaten by his people, its blood to be applied for the safeguarding of their salvation, and to be called the Passover (See Exod 12)—which no one is permitted to pretend has not now been fulfilled in Christ? Therefore from the Scriptures I acknowledge him unlike; from the Scriptures acknowledge him with me also like—not unlike in the respect in which he is like, but the one for one cause, the other for another, provided I demonstrate both. Christ is unlike man, because he is God; for it is written of him: Who is over all, God blessed forever (Rom 9:5). And Christ is like man, because he is man; for it is likewise written of him: the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). Christ is unlike the sinner, because he is always holy; and Christ is like the sinner, because God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh (See Rom 8:3). Christ is unlike the man born of sexual union, insofar as he was born of a virgin; but Christ is like the man who is born, insofar as he too was born of a woman, of whom it was said: What is born of you, the holy one, shall be called the Son of God (Lk 1:35). Christ is unlike the man who died for his own sin, insofar as he died without sin and by his own power; but again Christ is like the man who dies, insofar as he too died a true death of the body.

16. Nor should you disparage Moses, God's servant, because you have said that he was a sinner and was slain on a mountain because he had offended his God (See Deut 34:5). For he too knew how to glory in the Lord, that he might be saved by him—by whom that man too is saved who says: Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first (1 Tim 1:15). For Moses is rebuked by the divine voice because his faith faltered somewhat in bringing water from the rock (Num 20:10–12)—which can be common to him with the sin of Peter, who amid the waves wavered through a like failure of faith (See Mt 14:30–31). But far be it that we should believe him, on this account, estranged from the eternal fellowship of the saints—he who, with holy Elijah, as the Gospel relates, was found worthy to stand by the Lord glorified on the mountain (See Mt 17:1–5). For, as we read in the ancient books, even after that very sin it appears how great is his merit before God. But what was the cause that God should speak of avenging his sin by such a death? Since I have promised to demonstrate that the very things you have selected as deserving censure pertain to the foretelling of Christ, I will do as I can, with the Lord's help, so that I may teach that even this which you censured in the death of Moses was a prophecy about Christ to those who understand rightly.

17. For just as it is the custom of the divine mysteries in the holy Scriptures that one and the same man at different times bears one or another character for the sake of signifying something, so at that time Moses bore the character of the Jewish people placed under the Law, and prefigured it in a prophetic foreshadowing. Therefore, just as Moses, striking the rock with his rod, doubted of God's power, so that people, who were held under the Law given through Moses, in fastening Christ to the wood of the cross did not believe that he was the Power of God. But just as the struck rock poured forth water for the thirsty, so the wound of the Lord's passion became life for believers. For we have on this matter the most illustrious and most faithful word of the Apostle, when he spoke of it, saying: and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4).

This carnal despair of Christ's divinity, then, God commands to die in the very loftiness of Christ, when he commands the death of Moses' flesh to take place on the mountain. For as the rock is Christ, so too the mountain is Christ: the rock his lowly strength, the mountain his eminent greatness. For just as the Apostle says, the rock was Christ, so the Lord himself says: A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden (Mt 5:14)—asserting, namely, that he is the mountain, and that his faithful, founded in the glory of his name, are the city.

The prudence of the flesh lives when, like a struck rock, Christ's lowliness on the cross is despised: for Christ crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the gentiles. And the prudence of the flesh dies when, like the eminence of a mountain, the exalted Christ is acknowledged: for to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God (See 1 Cor 1:23–24). And so Moses went up the mountain, that with his flesh dead he might be received with a living spirit—the mountain Faustus had not climbed, so that with a dead mind he might utter carnal slanders.

Did not Peter himself, through the prudence of the flesh, shudder at the rock being struck, when he said to the Lord as he foretold his passion: Far be it, Lord; this shall not happen; be merciful to yourself? For the Lord did not spare this sin, when he replied to him: Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me, for you do not savor the things of God but the things of men (Mt 16:22–23). Or where did this carnal distrust die, except in Christ's glorification, as it were in the height of the mountain? For it surely lived when Peter timidly denied him, and it surely had died when he freely proclaimed him. This distrust lived in Saul, when, detesting the stumbling block of the cross, he laid waste the Christian faith (See Acts 8:3); and where had it died except on that mountain, when Paul could now say: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20)?

18. What have you then, heretical vanity, by which you think you can prove that it was not foretold of Christ: I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like you (Deut 18:18)—since not even from this can you do so, namely from the fact that you show him dissimilar? For by other causes we too show him similar. Or is it because he was called a prophet, who also deigned to be a man and foretold so many things to come? Unless, perhaps, a prophet is something other than a man foretelling things to come beyond human conjecture? Whence he himself says of himself: A prophet is not without honor except in his own country (Mt 13:57). But of you I shall see later—you who a little before confessed yourself convicted when you said that your profession has bound you to believe the Gospel. Let the Jew himself come forward into the midst, who wrongly lifts a neck free from the yoke of Christ, and so still thinks it permitted him to say: "Your Christ has lied; Moses wrote nothing about him."

19. Let him tell me what prophet God promised when he said to Moses: I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like you, or, similar to you (Deut 18:18). For there were many prophets afterward, but he surely wished some one to be understood. Here, I believe, that successor of Moses will most readily come to his mind, the one who led the people, freed from Egypt, into the land of promise. Thinking of him, he will perhaps still laugh at me for asking of whom it was said, I will raise up for them a prophet like you, since he can read who succeeded Moses, when he was dead, in the same office of governing and leading that people. And when he has laughed at me as one unlearned—for such is how Faustus too describes him—I will not cease to address the man further and to recall him from his careless laughter to the care of answering,

by asking and demanding: why, to that very future successor of his—in comparison with whom he was found wanting, in that he himself was not to lead the people into the land of promise, lest, namely, the Law given through Moses not to save but to convict the sinner should be thought to lead into the kingdom of heaven, whereas grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (See Jn 1:17)—I shall therefore ask of the Jew why Moses changed the name of that very future successor of his. For he was called Hoshea, and Moses called him Joshua (See Num 13:9; 14:6). Why, finally, did he so name him at the time when he sent him ahead from the valley of Paran to that same land to which the people were to come under his leadership? For the true Jesus himself said: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself (Jn 14:3). I shall also ask whether the prophet does not bear witness to this figure when he says: God will come from the south, and the holy one from Paran (Hab 3:3)—as if to say: He will come, a holy God of that name whose name was his who came from the south, from Paran—that is, Jesus.

To this is added that the same Word of God himself is understood to speak where he promises that same successor of Moses, through whom the people would be brought into the land of promise, calling him by the name of an angel—as men too announcing something are wont to be called in the divine Scripture. And he says thus: Behold, I send my angel before your face, to keep you on the way and to bring you into the land which I have sworn to you. Give heed to him and obey him; do not disbelieve him, for he will take nothing from you, for my name is in him (Exod 23:20–21).

What is this? Let now not the Manichean but even the Jew himself search through those Scriptures, and see whether God said of any angel, my name is in him, except of this one whom he promises as the leader into the land of promise. Then let him seek among men who, as Moses' successor, led the people in; and he will find Joshua—called this not from the beginning of his life, but with his name changed. He, therefore, who said, my name is in him, in that Joshua, is himself the true Jesus, the ruler and leader of the people into the inheritance of eternal life, according to the New Testament, of which the Old Testament was a figure. Thus, as far as concerns the prophetic apparatus, nothing more distinguished could be done or said, since the matter was carried even to the expression of the name.

20. It remains that that Jew—if he wishes to be a Jew also in secret, not by the letter but by the spirit (See Rom 2:29); if he wishes to be reckoned a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile (See Jn 1:47)—should remember, in the figure, that dead Joshua who led into the land of the dying, and should acknowledge, in the truth, the living Jesus, under whose leadership he may enter the land of the living. For such a man, no longer bitter, will not resist so clear a prophecy, but, made gentle by the remembrance of the Joshua who led into that land of promise, will now hear the very one whose name that man bore, leading in more truly and saying: Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land as their inheritance (Mt 5:4). Here now even that gentile, if he did not have too stony a heart, or if he were of those stones from which God raises up sons to Abraham (See Mt 3:9)—would he not marvel that in the ancient books of the very nation from which Jesus was said to be born, so evident a prophecy was written about him that even his name was expressed? And at the same time he would notice there that it was not just any man who was foretold as Jesus, but God indeed; since in that man who was appointed to govern the people and to lead them into the kingdom, and was called Jesus with his name changed, God said that his own name was present, and called him an angel—by this very fact, that with his name changed he was sent announcing something great and divine. For who, even slightly tinged with that language, is unaware that "angel" is Greek for "messenger"?

For this reason any gentile, if he were unwilling to be perverse and obstinate, would not despise those books on the ground that they were Hebrew, by whose nation's law he was not bound; rather, he would set great store by the books of any nation whatever, because in them he would find written so long beforehand the things that he recognized as already fulfilled in his own times. And he would not spurn Christ Jesus himself on the ground that he saw him foretold in Hebrew writings; rather he would judge that one to be followed and venerated with vast wonder and devout religion who, before he was born among men, had deserved to be foretold and commended through so many volumes of the ages, by writings of every kind—partly by clearer testimonies, partly by figures and sacraments of deeds done and of words spoken.

Thus, from the effects of Christian things now present, the prophecy of the books would be proved true; and from the prophecy of the books, Christ would be recognized as one to be worshiped. Let me be reckoned to speak vain things, if it has not so come to pass, if it does not so come to pass, if the whole world over there is not a flocking together, through the reading of those same books, into that faith.

21. Hence the senselessness of these people is marvelously to be laughed at, who ask of us as though it were impossible how a gentile would wish to learn the Christian faith through the books of the Jews, when he sees all nations becoming, with such devotion and such celebrity, the disciples of those books—and all the more strongly and firmly, indeed, because such great testimonies about Christ are produced from the hands of his enemies; for the gentiles who believe can suppose nothing about him to have been fabricated for the occasion, since they find Christ in those books to which those serve who crucified Christ, and which they hold in such a high pinnacle of authority who daily blaspheme Christ.

For if the prophecies about Christ were produced by those who preach Christ, they would be thought fabricated by those very people; but as it is, he who preaches expounds what he who blasphemes recites. For every blindness of the impious is ordained by the most high God to some use of the saints, who, by the fairness of his governance, makes good use even of the wicked, so that those who by their own choice live unjustly are by his judgment justly disposed of.

Therefore, lest the testimonies of the prophecy—that Christ would be born, would work wonders, would suffer indignities, would die, would rise again, would ascend, and would scatter through all nations the Gospel of eternal life—should be believed to have been invented by those who announced him to the peoples, something great was done for our benefit out of the unbelief of the Jews: that these same people who did not have these things in their hearts for their own sake might have them in their books for our sake. Nor is the authority of those books thereby diminished, because they are not understood by the Jews; rather it is even increased, for their very blindness was foretold there. Whence, all the more, by not understanding the truth they bear witness to the truth: for when they do not understand the books in which they were foretold as not destined to understand, by this very fact too they show those books to be truthful.

22. Hence comes also that text, by whose ambiguity Faustus is deceived: You will see your life hanging, and you will not believe your life (Deut 28:66). Someone may say that these words can also be understood otherwise; but that they cannot be understood of Christ, neither did Faustus dare to say, nor will anyone at all dare, except one who denies either that Christ is the life, or that he was seen hanging by the Jews, or that they did not believe him. But since he himself says, I am the life (Jn 14:6), and since it is established that he hung before the eyes of Jews who did not believe him, I do not see why we should doubt that he too wrote about Christ, of whom Christ says: For he wrote about me (Jn 5:47).

Accordingly, if Faustus tried to show that the text—I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like you—cannot be understood of Christ, because Christ is not like Moses, and yet has been wholly convicted, what need is there to labor over this testimony? Or else, just as he said that Christ is not like Moses in order to refute that prophecy, so, in order to refute this one, let him say that Christ is not the life, or that he did not hang in the sight of the Jews who did not believe him. But since he did not say this, and since none of them would dare to say it today, there is no reason why we should delay in embracing this prophecy too, made by his servant about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But, you say, this too is set among other curses. Is it then not a prophecy, when the other things among which it is set are nothing but prophecies? Or is it not a prophecy about Christ, because the things woven in before or after it in that reading seem to have no bearing on Christ? As if there were anything worse among the curses that befell the Jews for the desert of their proud impiety than to see their life—that is, the Son of God—hanging, and not to believe their life! For curses, when they are spoken from prophecy, do not come from the evil wish of one imprecating, but from the foreknowing spirit of one announcing. For those that come from an evil wish are forbidden, when it is said: Bless, and do not curse (Rom 12:14). But these are often found in the speech of the saints, as the apostle Paul: Alexander, he says, the coppersmith did me much harm; the Lord will repay him according to his works (2 Tim 4:14). For the Apostle even seems, as if vexed and indignant, to have wished evil in that saying: Would that those who unsettle you would even mutilate themselves! (Gal 5:12) Yet surely, if you consider the person of the writer, you will understand that by a most elegant ambiguity he rather wished them well. For there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 19:12). And Faustus would have tasted this too in these words, if he had brought a devout palate to the Lord's food.

For perhaps what was said—You will see your life hanging, and you will not believe your life—sounded to the Jews thus: that, seeing their life hang in uncertainty amid the threats or treacheries of their enemies, they would not believe they would live. But the son of the Gospel, when he hears, For he wrote about me, sees in this very ambiguity of the saying what the prophets cast before swine and what they signify to men; and at once there comes to his mind the life of men, Christ, hanging, and the Jews not believing him for this very reason, that they see him hanging. And someone else, indeed, might quickly say that, among the other curses in that reading which have no bearing on understanding anything of Christ, this alone there is about Christ, namely what is written: You will see your life hanging, and you will not believe your life. For it would not be impossible that among the various curses prophetically foretold to that impious people, this too should be set down. But I—and those who with me consider somewhat more attentively that evangelical and dominical saying, in which he did not say "For he wrote also about me," so that he might be believed to have written other things too which do not pertain to Christ, but said For he wrote about me (Jn 5:46), so that we should, by searching, refer the whole intent of that writing to nothing but the understanding of Christ's grace—we recognize that the other curses in that reading too were foretold on account of Christ; which, if I should now wish to show, it would take far too long.

23. Hence it is so far from being the case that what Faustus mentioned does not pertain to Christ because it is set among other curses, that those very other things have no right understanding unless they are referred, as prophesied, to the glory of Christ, by which the human race is provided for—how much more this one! Even if Moses had been such a man as to pour out by mouth, while his heart beheld something else, I would more readily say that he prophesied without knowing it than that, when I heard it said to the Jewish people, You will see your life hanging, and you will not believe your life, I should deny that it was prophesied about Christ.

For Caiaphas did not behold in his mind that which was understood from his words, when, persecuting Christ as an enemy, he said it was expedient that one man die, lest the whole nation perish. To which the Evangelist added that he said this not of himself, but, being high priest, prophesied (See Jn 11:49–51). But Moses was not Caiaphas; therefore what he said to the Hebrew people—You will see your life hanging, and you will not believe your life—he said not only about Christ (which, even had he said it unknowingly, ought to be understood as said about no other), but he said it knowingly. For he was the most faithful steward of the prophetic mystery—that is, of that priestly chrism from which we recognize the name of Christ;

in which mystery even Caiaphas, a most wicked man, could prophesy even unknowingly. For this is what the prophetic chrism worked in him, that he should prophesy; and this his impious life worked, that he should prophesy unknowingly. With what mouth, then, is it said that Moses prophesied nothing about Christ?—from whom that chrism took its beginning, whence the name of Christ became known, and whence even a persecutor of Christ prophesied of Christ, albeit unknowingly.

24. Now concerning the curse on one hanging on the wood, we have already said above, as far as seemed sufficient. But that Moses commanded the killing of a prophet or leader of the people who should wish to turn the children of Israel away from their God, or to break any of the commandments, did not command this against Christ—this is sufficiently clear both from the many things we have already treated, and to one who considers more and more the words and deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ it will become clearer and clearer: for Christ did not wish to turn any of them away from their God. For the God whom Moses had commanded them to love and worship is surely the very God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, whom the Lord Jesus Christ recalls with the same commendation, and by whose authority he refutes the error of the Sadducees who denied the resurrection, where he says: But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to Moses from the bush: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Mt 22:31–32; Lk 20:37–38)—for all live to him. Opportunely, then, the Manicheans are now convicted by the same voice by which the Sadducees were then convicted: for they too deny the resurrection itself, though in another manner.

Likewise, when, praising the faith of the centurion, he said, Amen, I say to you, I have not found such great faith in Israel, he added and said: But I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will go into the outer darkness (Mt 8:10–12). If, then—as Faustus cannot deny—Moses commended to the people of Israel no God but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Christ without doubt commends that same God from these and other testimonies, he did not try to turn that people away from their God; rather, he threatened that they would go into the outer darkness because he saw them turned away from their God, in whose kingdom he says the gentiles, called from the whole world, will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—for no other reason than that they had held the faith of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whence the Apostle too says: And the Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the gentiles by faith, foretold to Abraham, saying: In your seed shall all nations be blessed (Gal 3:8)—so that those, namely, would be blessed in the seed of Abraham who imitated the faith of Abraham. Christ, therefore, did not wish to turn the Israelites away from their God, but rather rebuked them for being turned away from him.

But whoever supposes that the Lord broke any of those commandments that were given through Moses, it is no wonder if he thinks what the Jews thought; but he errs for this reason, that in this the Jews too erred. And where Faustus mentions the very commandment that he wants believed the Lord broke, there it is needful that we show how he is deceived, just as we have already shown above, where it was needful.

Now I say this: that if the Lord had broken any of those commandments, he would not also have rebuked the Jews on this very score; for, when they slandered his disciples for eating with unwashed hands and thereby transgressing—not the commandment of God, but the traditions of the elders—he said to them: Why do you too transgress the commandment of God to establish your traditions? And he mentions the very commandment of God which we know was commanded through Moses. For he went on to say: For God said: Honor your father and mother; and: He who curses father or mother shall die the death. But you say: Whoever shall say to father or mother, The gift that comes from me will profit you, need not honor his father; and you have made void the word of God on account of your tradition (Mt 15:3–6). In this matter, see how many things he teaches us: both that he does not turn the Jews away from their God; and that he not only does not break his commandments, but even rebukes those by whom they were broken; and that it was none but God who commanded these things through Moses.

25. For this reason, since we believe that everything Moses wrote pertains to the commendation of Christ—and since we cannot demonstrate this in the present work, we have promised to show it in those passages which Faustus has selected from that writing for refuting or reproaching—it is rightly required of us as a debt that we show this too: that Moses' command, that a prophet or leader who should wish to turn them away from their God, or to break any of the commandments, be killed, pertains to guarding the faith that is learned in the Church of Christ. For he saw, by the prophetic spirit and with God speaking to him, that many heretics, teachers of various errors, would arise against the doctrine of Christ, who would not preach that Christ who is the true Christ. For he is the true one who was foretold through the prophecies issued through Moses himself and the other saints of that nation. Whoever, therefore, should wish to teach another, him Moses commanded to be killed. And what else does the catholic tongue do now but, with the spiritual sword of both Testaments, twice-sharpened in its edge, slay all who wish to turn us away from our God, or to break any of the commandments? Among whom Mani himself falls especially, when his error is destroyed by the asserted truth of the Law and the Prophets—he who wishes to turn us away from our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom Christ commends, and who wishes to break the commandments of the Law, in whose very figures we recognize that Christ was foretold.

26. As for that conclusion of his, whether I should call it most obtuse or most fraudulent, I do not know—for Faustus had talent; whence I rather judge that he wished to cast a fog over the less attentive reader than that he did not see what I shall say. For he says: "But if Moses did not write these things about Christ, you will either give others, or there will be none." This proposition is true; but it would have followed that he should also show both that these were not written about Christ and that others cannot be given. He did neither of these: for we have both shown how these can be taken of Christ, and above we gave many others which can have no understanding except of Christ. There is no reason, then, why you should conclude, Faustus, that nothing was written by Moses about Christ.

For attend to what you say: "But if," you say, "he did not write these things about Christ, you will either give others, or there will be none." You say truly. Accordingly, since we have taught both that these were written about Christ, or on account of Christ, and have given many others, it is rather your argument that will be none. And these things you mentioned, although you did not make your case, you at least tried to show were not written about Christ. But as to what you added—"you will either give others, or there will be none"—you ought first to have demonstrated that we cannot give others, so that you might securely infer that there are none. But as it is, as though your little book were going to have deaf hearers or blind readers, so that no one would notice what you passed over, you hurried to say: "If there are none, then neither could Christ assert what is nowhere; and so, if Christ did not assert this, this chapter will have stood proven false."

O the man who thinks himself a speaker, and another a non-thinking contradictor! Where is your sharpness? Or in a bad cause could you do no otherwise? But the bad cause forced you to speak vain things; yet no one forces you to have a bad cause. For what if we shall give others? Surely there will not be none, since there will be some. And if there will be some, Christ could assert this thing that is. So, if Christ could assert this, that evangelical chapter does not stand proven false. Return, then, to your proposition, by which you said, "You will either give others, or there will be none"; and see that you did not show that we would give no others. See also how many others we have already given above, and observe what is concluded from this: namely, that what we read Christ said in the Gospel is not false: If you believed Moses, you would believe me too; for he wrote about me (Jn 5:46).

And indeed the authority of the Gospel is so eminent and its truth so well founded that, even if, through the slowness of our understanding, we found nothing written by Moses about Christ, we ought nonetheless to believe not only that there are some things, but that everything he wrote pertains to Christ—for he did not say, "He wrote also about me," but, He wrote about me. But as it is, even if (which be far from us) there were to be doubt about this chapter of the Gospel, once so many testimonies about Christ in the writing of Moses had been found out, all that doubt would be removed; and since there is no doubting about the chapter of the Gospel, even if those testimonies had not been found out, they ought nonetheless to be believed to exist.

27. As for what you add—"that the tradition of Christ and of Moses was dissimilar; and that therefore it was not verisimilar that, if they believed Moses, they would believe Christ too; indeed, that this rather followed, that if the Jews believed the one, they would necessarily oppose the other"—you would surely not say this if you raised the eye of consideration a little, and beheld, without the blindness of contentiousness, the world believing in Moses and Christ alike, among men learned and unlearned, Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, to whom the Apostle called himself a debtor (See Rom 1:14). If, then, it was not verisimilar that the Jews would believe Moses and Christ alike, much less verisimilar is it that the world would believe Moses and Christ alike. But since we see all nations believing both, and holding the prophecy of the one, agreeing with the Gospel of the other, by a most robust and most celebrated faith, that one nation was not being called to anything impossible when it was said to it: If you believed Moses, you would believe me too; and rather to be marveled at and more vehemently rebuked is the hardness of the Jews, who did not do what we behold the whole world to have done.

For whatever you say about the Sabbath, and about the circumcision of the flesh, and about the distinction of foods—that the tradition of Moses was one thing, and that Christians learned something else through Christ—we have already shown above that, as the Apostle says, all these things were figures of us (1 Cor 10:6). The teaching, then, is not different, but the time is different. For one was the time at which these things had to be foretold through figured prophecies, and another is the time at which these things now have to be fulfilled through manifest and rendered truth. But what wonder is it if the Jews, understanding the Sabbath carnally, opposed Christ, who was now imparting it spiritually? Answer the Apostle, if you can, who testifies that the rest of that very day is a shadow of what was to come (See Col 2:16–17). But if they resisted Christ, not understanding the true Sabbath, do not you resist him, and understand true innocence. For in that very place where Jesus is especially thought a destroyer of the Sabbath—when his disciples, passing through the grain and hungry, plucked the ears and ate—he called them innocent, replying to the Jews: If you knew what this means: I desire mercy rather than sacrifice, you would never have condemned the innocent (Mt 12:7). For they ought rather to have had mercy on the hungry, since these did this compelled by hunger.

But among you, whoever plucks ears of grain is reckoned a murderer—not by the tradition of Christ, who calls this innocence, but by the tradition of the homicide Mani. Or did the Apostles perhaps show mercy to those very ears of grain, so as to purify the members of God by eating them, as your fable has it? Then you are the cruel ones, who do not do this. But of course Faustus knows how to destroy the Sabbath, because he knows that the power of God always and tirelessly works. Let those say this who understand that God makes all times without any temporal will. This bears hard on you, who declare that the rest of your god was shaken off by the rebellion of the nation of darkness, and disturbed by the sudden onset of enemies. Or, foreseeing from eternity that this would happen, did he never have rest, because he was never free of care—he who was thinking that he would wage so grievous a war with such great ruin and loss of his own members?

29. But that Sabbath which you ignorantly and impiously deride—unless it too had its understanding among the prophecies that are written about Christ, Christ would not so bear witness to it: he who, suffering by his own will, as you yourself set down in his praise, and therefore having in his power the times of his passion and resurrection, brought it about that his flesh should rest in the tomb on the Sabbath from all its works, so that, rising on the third day, which we call the Lord's day, which is counted the eighth after the Sabbath, he might declare that the circumcision of the eighth day too pertained to the foretelling of himself. For what does the circumcision of the flesh signify? What, but the stripping off of the mortality which we bear from our carnal generation? On account of this the Apostle said: Stripping himself of the flesh, he made an example of the principalities and powers, triumphing over them confidently in himself (Col 2:15). For in that he says that he stripped himself of the flesh, in that place by "flesh" we understand the mortality of the flesh, according to which properly this body is named flesh.

This mortality is properly called flesh, because in that immortality of the resurrection it will not exist; therefore it is written: Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God. About which words you are accustomed to slander our faith, by which we believe in the future resurrection of this body, which has already gone before in the Lord himself,

while you disregard what follows, in which the Apostle openly explains what he means. For, wishing to show what he there called flesh, he immediately added: nor will corruption possess incorruption (1 Cor 15:50). For this body, which on account of its mortality is properly named flesh, he says will be changed in the resurrection, so that it will no longer be corruptible and mortal.

Lest this be thought to be said by our own conjecture, consult his very words that follow. Behold, he says, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor 15:51–53). In order, then, that it may put on immortality, it puts off mortality.

This is the mystery of circumcision, which was commanded to be done on the eighth day (See Gen 17:12), and which has now been fulfilled in truth by the Lord on the eighth day—that is, on the Lord's day after the Sabbath. Hence it is said: Stripping himself of the flesh, he made an example of the principalities and powers (Col 2:15). For through this mortality the envious diabolical powers held dominion over us; and he is said to have made an example of them because in himself, our head, he provided the example of what will be accomplished in his whole body—that is, the Church, to be freed from the devil's power—in the final resurrection: this is our faith. And since, as Paul recalls the prophetic testimony, The just lives by faith (Rom 1:17; Hab 2:4)—this is our justification.

For that Christ died even the pagans believe; but that Christ rose again is the faith proper to Christians. For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, says the Apostle, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom 10:9). Since, therefore, we are justified by this faith in the resurrection, this too about Christ is apostolic: that he died for our offenses and rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25). And since this resurrection, which when believed justifies us, was figured in that circumcision of the eighth day, therefore concerning Abraham himself, to whom it was first handed down, the Apostle says: And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:11). Moses, then, wrote of this circumcision too, among the other prophetic figures, about Christ—of whom he himself says: For he wrote about me (Jn 5:46).

But as for what the Lord says—Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who go about over sea and dry land to make one proselyte; and when you have made him, you make him a son of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves (Mt 23:15)—he said this not because he is circumcised, but because he imitates the conduct of those whose imitation he forbids to his own, saying: The scribes and Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses; what they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not do (Mt 23:2–3). In these words of the Lord you ought to notice both things: both how great an honor was paid to the teaching of Moses, in whose seat even wicked men, while sitting, were compelled to teach good things; and how the proselyte became a son of Gehenna—namely, not by hearing the words of the law from the Pharisees, but by following their deeds. This, then, could be said at that time to the circumcised proselyte, what Paul says: Circumcision indeed profits, if you keep the law (Rom 2:25). But because he, in not keeping the law, imitated the Pharisees, he became a son of Gehenna—and for this reason, I think, twice as much as they, because he neglected to fulfill what he had taken upon himself by his own will, being not born of the Jews but made a Jew of his own accord.

30. But what did you mean to say, insultingly and without consideration, that "Moses sits as an arbiter after the manner of a glutton, and commands that some things indeed be licked up as clean, but that others, as unclean, not even be touched"?—when it rather belongs to a glutton to make no distinctions; or, if he does distinguish, to choose the more pleasant. Or do you say this so that to the unlearned your continence may seem admirable, as it were from your earliest years, as though you did not know—or had already forgotten—how much more pleasantly pork tastes than mutton? But because Moses wrote these things too, in prophetic figures, about Christ, signifying by the flesh of animals the men who are either to be incorporated into the body of Christ, which is the Church, or to be rejected, he figured you too among the unclean—you who therefore do not agree with the catholic faith, because you neither chew the cud of the word of wisdom, nor, distinguishing the two Testaments, the Old and the New, in harmony, do you have, as it were, the cloven hoof. But who could endure that you too were not ashamed to follow the deceit of your Adimantus?

31. For you too say: "that Christ taught the indifference of foods in such a way that from his own disciples he removed all flesh entirely, but to the worldly people he granted in common everything that could be eaten; and that he asserted that nothing entering into the mouth defiled them, since the things that proceed shamelessly from the mouth are the only things that defile a man." These are your words, uttered and expressed by a falsehood the more shameless the more open it is. First, because, according to Christ's judgment, if only those things defile a man which come forth evil from the mouth, why did not those same things alone defile Christ's disciples too, so that there would be no need to forbid them, as it were, unclean flesh? Or are worldly men not defiled by the things that enter the mouth, but by the things that go out of the mouth? Then they are better fortified against uncleanness than the saints, if even the things that enter and the things that go out can pollute the saints.

But I would have these people tell me what Christ ate and drank, who, in comparison with John, who neither ate nor drank, said that he himself ate and drank. For when he was rebuking the perversity of men, who sought grounds for slander in both cases, he said: For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say: He has a demon; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-drinker, a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Mt 11:18–19). And John's food and drink we know: for it was not said that he did not drink at all, but that he did not drink wine or strong drink (See Lk 1:15); he drank water, then. And his food was not nothing at all, but locusts and wild honey (See Mt 3:4). How, then, was he called neither eating nor drinking, except because he did not use that fare which the Jews used? Unless the Lord used this, then, he would not be called, in comparison with John, eating and drinking. Or is it perhaps because the Lord fed on bread and vegetables, on which John did not feed? It is a wonder if one who eats locusts and honey is called not eating, and one who is content with bread and vegetables is called eating.

But suppose about his foods whatever you wish; certainly he would not be called a drinker and a wine-drinker unless he drank wine: why, then, do you think this too unclean? For it is not for the sake of continence and the discipline of taming the body that you forbid touching these things, but because they are unclean: for you declare that these are the filth and gall of the nation of darkness, against the Apostle who says: To the clean all things are clean (Titus 1:15). Behold those who dare to say that Christ was a teacher of the indifference of foods, yet that he forbade his disciples the things they themselves think unclean. Show, you deceivers, you wicked men, where he removed these from his disciples; yet, by the providence of God the avenger, so blinded that you even prompt us with that by which you are convicted.

For I am compelled by my own mind to insert here for inspection the whole of that chapter of the Gospel which this man wished to set against Moses, so that there we may see how false it is, what first Adimantus, and now Faustus, has said—that the Lord Jesus removed the eating of flesh from his disciples, and granted it in common to the worldly. For after he had answered those slandering his disciples for eating with unwashed hands, the Gospel goes on thus: And calling the crowds together, he said to them: Hear and understand. Not what enters the mouth makes a man common; but what proceeds from the mouth makes a man common. Then the disciples, coming up, said to him: Do you know that the Pharisees, when they heard this word, were scandalized? (Mt 15:10–20) Here surely, addressed by the disciples, he ought, as these people would have it, to have taught them expressly to abstain from all flesh, so that what he said above—Not what enters the mouth makes a man common, but what proceeds from the mouth—might seem to have been said to the crowds.

Let the Evangelist, then, go on, and tell what the Lord replied now not to the crowds but to the disciples. But he, answering, said: Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both fall into the pit (Mt 15:13–14). This, surely, because, wishing to establish their own traditions, they did not understand the commandments of God. But the disciples had not yet asked of the Master how they themselves ought to take what he had said to the crowds. Behold, this happens too: for the Evangelist continues, and says: But Peter, answering, said to him: Explain this parable to us (Mt 15:15). From this we understand that Peter supposed the Lord had spoken not expressly nor openly when he said, Not what enters the mouth makes a man common, but what proceeds from the mouth, but that, as is his custom, he wished to signify something by the obscurity of a parable.

Let us see, then, whether now, when the disciples ask him more privately, he says what the Manicheans want—that all flesh is unclean, and that they ought not to touch any of it. What? He reproaches them for not yet understanding his open statement, and for thinking what was said expressly to be a parable. For thus it follows: But he said: Are you too still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything that enters the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the privy? But the things that proceed from the mouth come out of the heart, and these make a man common. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies; these are what make a man common; but to eat with unwashed hands does not make a man common (Mt 15:16–20).

32. Surely now the deceit, made manifest, departs convicted; surely now it is clear that the Lord did not teach the crowds one thing and the disciples privately another; surely it is perceived without doubt that the Manicheans rather are the liars and deceivers, not Moses, not Christ, not the doctrine of both Testaments—there figured, here revealed; there foretold, here made present. How, then, do they suppose that the Catholics keep none of the things Moses wrote, when they observe absolutely all of them—no longer in figures, but in those very things which those figures foretold by signifying? For, supposing there were one time for writing and another for reading, we would not rightly say that the reader did not observe that writing, because he too did not make those characters; since they were figures of sounds, while he was now uttering the very sounds, occupied not with forming those figures but admonished by inspecting them.

But the Jews did not believe Christ for this reason: that they did not observe even those things which Moses had commanded not figuratively but openly. Hence he says to them: You tithe mint and cumin, and leave the weightier matters of the Law, mercy and judgment; straining out a gnat, but swallowing a camel: these you ought to have done, without omitting the others (Mt 23:23–24). Hence too is that—that by their traditions they taught how the commandment of God might be weakened, by which he had bidden that honor be paid to parents; for which pride and iniquity they deserved to be blinded, so that they did not understand the rest, because the things they did understand they impiously despised.

33. Do you see how I do not say to you, "If you are a Christian, believe Christ when he says that Moses wrote about him; but if you do not believe, you are not a Christian"? For you yourself see what you think of yourself, you who seek to be taught about Christ as a gentile or a Jew. I, nevertheless, have not shirked even this, and I have closed off to you, as far as I could, every approach of error. Nor have I let lie open that precipice into which you blind ones cast yourselves, saying that things in the Gospel are false wherever your heresy has found no way out—so that nothing remains to you by which you can return to believing Christ where this voice of pestilence cannot be set against you.

Indeed, you desire to be taught in such a way as the Christian Thomas, whom Christ "did not spurn as he doubted about himself, but, to heal the wounds of his mind, showed him the scars of his body." These are your words. It is well that you require to be taught in this way. For how I feared that you would contend that this too in the Gospel is false! Believe, then, the scars of Christ: for if those scars were true, those wounds too had been true; and there could be no true wounds except in true flesh—this truth overturns your whole error.

Moreover, if Christ showed false scars to his doubting disciple, then you call him a deceiver in teaching thus, and you desire to be deceived in learning thus. But since there is no one who wishes to be deceived, while many wish to deceive, I understand that you wish rather, after Christ's example, to teach deceitfully than, after Thomas's example, to learn deceitfully. Accordingly, if you believe that Christ deceived the doubter with false scars, who would wish to believe you teaching, and not rather to beware of you deceiving? But if that disciple touched the true scars of Christ, you are compelled to confess the true flesh of Christ too. Thus you will not remain a Manichean, if you believe as Thomas did; but you will remain an unbeliever, if you do not believe as Thomas did (See Jn 20:27–28).

1. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not accept the Law and the Prophets, since Christ said that he came not to abolish them but to fulfill them (See Mt 5:17)?

Who testifies that Jesus said this?

Matthew.

Where did he say it?

On the mountain.

In whose presence?

Peter, Andrew, James, and John—these four only; for he had not yet chosen the others, nor Matthew himself.

Of these four, then, one—that is, John—wrote a Gospel?

Yes.

Does he mention this anywhere?

Nowhere.

How, then, did Matthew write what John, who was on the mountain, does not testify—Matthew, who followed Jesus at a long interval, after Jesus had come down from the mountain? And on this account there is first doubt about this very thing, whether Jesus said any such thing, since the suitable witness is silent while the less suitable one speaks. So that for the moment we have allowed that Matthew did us an injury, until we prove that even he did not write these things, but some other person, I know not who, under his name—

which the very oblique narration of that same passage of Matthew teaches. For what does it say? And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man sitting at the tax office, named Matthew, and called him; and he, rising up at once, followed him (See Mt 9:9). And who, then, writing about himself, would say, "He saw a man, and called him, and he followed him," and not rather say, "He saw me, and called me, and I followed him"—unless it is established that Matthew did not write these things, but some other person, I know not who, under his name? Since, then, it would not even be true if Matthew himself wrote this—because he was not present when Jesus spoke these things on the mountain—how much more must it not be believed, since not even Matthew wrote these things, but another under the names of both Jesus and Matthew!

2. What of the fact that even from the very statement, by which he commands not to suppose that he came to abolish the Law, it may rather be understood that he did abolish it? For unless he were doing some such thing, the Jews could not suspect this. But, Do not suppose, he says, that I came to abolish the Law. Come now, then: suppose the Jews had said to him: "But what such thing are you doing, from which we might suspect this? Is it because you deride circumcision, violate the Sabbath, reject sacrifices, confound foods?" Is this, then, the "Do not suppose"? And what more, or what more manifest, could be done toward the destruction of the Law and the Prophets? Or if this is to fulfill the Law, what will it be to abolish it?

What of the fact that the Law and the Prophets do not even rejoice in being fulfilled, so full and complete do they seem to themselves, whose author and father disdains to have anything added to them no less than taken away—so that, writing in Deuteronomy, he says: These precepts which I command you today, O Israel, you shall observe; and beware that you do not turn aside from them, neither to the left nor to the right; nor add anything to them, nor diminish; but you shall persevere in them, that the Lord your God may bless you (Deut 5:32; 12:32)? Wherefore, whether for the sake of fulfilling, Jesus added something to the Law and the Prophets, he seems to have slipped to the right; or whether he took away in order to destroy, to the left; either way he certainly offended the author of the Law; and therefore either that statement means something else, or it is false.

3. AUGUSTINE replied: O marvelous madness, to be unwilling to believe Matthew when he relates something about Christ, and to wish to believe a Manichean! If Matthew was not present when Christ said, I came not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17), and therefore he is not to be believed: was a Manichean present, or even yet born, when Christ appeared among men? According, then, to this law of your faith, you ought to have believed him in nothing of what he testifies about Christ.

But we do not say that a Manichean is not to be believed because he was not present at the deeds and words of Christ, and was born long after; rather, because he speaks about Christ against Christ's disciples, and against the Gospel which was confirmed by their authority. For we have the word of the Apostle, who in the Holy Spirit saw that such men would come. Whence he said to the faithful: If anyone preaches to you a gospel besides what you have received, let him be anathema (Gal 1:9). For if no one speaks truth about Christ except one who saw and heard him while present, then today no one speaks truth about him. But if today true things are spoken about him to his faithful because those who saw and heard disseminated them either by preaching or by writing, why could not Matthew hear true things about Christ from the mouth of John, his fellow disciple, in a matter at which the latter was present and he himself was not—if from the book of John we can speak true things about Christ, not only we who were born so long after, but also others who will be born after us? For on this ground not only Matthew's Gospel, but also that of Luke and Mark, who followed the same disciples, has been received into an authority not unequal. To this is added that the Lord himself could have related to Matthew what, before he had called him, he had done with those whom he had called earlier.

But, you say, John himself ought to have put this in his own Gospel, if he had heard this said by the Lord—he who, when it was said, was present? As if it could not happen that, since he could not write everything he had heard from the Lord, among the other things he passed over he passed over this too, while he was intent on writing other things. Did he not himself conclude his Gospel thus, saying: And many other things Jesus did, which, if they were written one by one, I do not think the world itself could contain the books that would be written (Jn 21:25)? Here surely he shows that he knew he had passed over many things.

But if John's authority pleases you concerning the Law and the Prophets, believe John when he bears witness to the Law and the Prophets. He wrote that Isaiah saw the glory of Christ (See Jn 12:41). In his Gospel you have what we discussed a little before: If you believed Moses, you would believe me too; for he wrote about me (See Jn 5:46). On every side your shuffling is beaten down. Say openly that you do not believe Christ's gospel: for those who in the Gospel believe what they wish and do not believe what they wish, believe themselves rather than the Gospel.

4. But what an elegant thing Faustus seemed to himself to say, when he wished it not to be believed that Matthew wrote these things, because, in telling of his own choosing, he did not say, "He saw me and said to me: Follow me," but, He saw Matthew and said to him: Follow me (Mt 9:9): which I do not know whether he said out of the error of ignorance or out of his habit of deceit. But I would not suppose him so ignorant as not to have read or heard that writers of history, when they come to their own person, are wont to compose their account as though they were narrating about another what they narrate about themselves. I rather judge, then, that he wished not, as one ignorant, but to spread a fog before the ignorant, hoping he would catch the more, who did not know these things.

And in the history of worldly affairs, indeed, examples of such narration are found; but there is no need for me to admonish our own people, or to refute this man, from another kind of literature. He himself, certainly, a little before brought forward certain testimonies from the books of Moses in such a way that he did not deny that Moses wrote them—indeed he even affirmed it—but contended that they did not pertain to Christ.

Let him read, then, in those same books, the things Moses wrote about himself, whether he wrote thus: "I said," or, "I did this or that," and not rather, Moses said (Exod 3:3), and, Moses did (Exod 7:6); or, "The Lord called me," or, "The Lord said to me," and not rather, The Lord called Moses (Lev 1:1), and, The Lord said to Moses (Exod 4:19); and all the rest in the same manner. So, then, Matthew too wrote about himself as about another—which John did also; for near the end of his book he too speaks thus: Peter, turning, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, who also leaned on his breast at the supper and had said to the Lord: Who is it that will betray you? Did he here say, "Peter, turning, saw me"? Or do they perhaps suppose, on this account, that this man too did not write that Gospel? But a little after he says: This is the disciple who bears witness about Jesus, and who wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true (Jn 21:20, 24). Did he say, "I am the disciple who bears witness about Jesus, and who wrote these things; and we know that my testimony is true"?

Certainly it is manifest that this was the custom of writers when they narrated deeds. How many things the Lord himself says about himself in this same manner—who could suffice to count them? When the Son of man comes, he says, do you think he will find faith on earth? (Lk 18:8)—he did not say, "When I come, do you think I shall find?" And: The Son of man came eating and drinking (Mt 11:19)—he did not say, "I came." And: The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live (Jn 5:25)—he did not say, "my voice"; and many things of this kind. Hence I now think that what has been said suffices both to admonish the studious and to convict the slanderous.

5. Now how feeble is that which he says—who does not see it?—that Christ could not have said, Do not suppose that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I came not to abolish but to fulfill (Mt 5:17), unless he had already done some such thing as could give rise to this suspicion? As if we deny that to the Jews, who did not understand, Christ could seem a destroyer of the Law and the Prophets! But this is the very reason why he, the truthful one and the truth, could not have said of some other Law and other Prophets that he did not abolish them, but only of those whom they suspected him of abolishing. This is sufficiently confirmed from this too, that there it follows, and he says: Amen, amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or one tittle will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever therefore abolishes one of these least commandments and teaches men so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and so teaches, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:18–19).

For he was thinking of the Pharisees when he said these things—they who abolished the Law by their deeds and taught it by their words. Of whom he says in another place: What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not do (Mt 23:3). Therefore here too it follows thus: For I say to you, unless your righteousness abounds more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:17–20)—that is, unless you do, and so teach, what they do not do and yet so teach, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. The very Law, then, which the Pharisees taught and did not do, Christ says he came not to abolish but to fulfill: because it pertains to the seat of Moses, on which the Pharisees, sitting and saying but not doing, are to be heard, not imitated.

6. Nor does Faustus understand—or perhaps he feigns not to understand—what it is to fulfill the Law, when he supposes this is to be taken of the addition of words, because it is written that nothing should be added to the Scripture of God, or taken away (See Deut 12:32):

whence he says that there ought to be no fulfilling of what is commended as so perfect that nothing is to be added or diminished. These people, then, do not know how he fulfills the Law who lives as the Law commanded. For the fullness of the Law is love, as the Apostle says (Rom 13:10). This love the Lord deigned both to display and to bestow, by sending the Holy Spirit to his faithful. Whence the same Apostle likewise says: The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). And the Lord himself: By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (Jn 13:35).

The Law, then, is fulfilled either when the things commanded there are done, or when the things prophesied there are displayed. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (See Jn 1:17). When the Law itself was fulfilled, grace and truth came. Grace pertains to the fullness of love, truth to the fulfillment of the prophecies. And because both are through Christ, therefore he came not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them: not that what was lacking should be added to the Law, but that what was written should be done—as his very words testify. For he did not say, "Not one iota or one tittle will pass from the Law until what is lacking is added," but, until all is accomplished.

1. FAUSTUS said: I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Mt 5:17). But to believe that this was said by Christ—unless perhaps it means something else—you should know is no less contrary to you than to me. For each of us is a Christian under this opinion, because we have supposed that Christ came for the destruction of the Law and the Prophets. And if for the moment you are unwilling to confess it in word, you nevertheless indicate it by your works. For from this it comes that you yourself too despise the precepts of the Law and the Prophets; from this that both of us confess that Jesus established the New Testament—by which what else do we confess but the destruction of the Old Testament? Since this is so, how shall we believe that Christ said this, unless we first condemn ourselves of a foolish opinion in the past, and have recourse to repentance, and obey the Law afresh and the Prophets, and take care to observe their commandments, of whatever sort they may be? And when we have done this, then at last we shall truly have believed that Jesus said he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. But as it is, it is false, because not even you believe it—of which you accuse me alone.

2. But be it so; suppose it was permitted to have erred in the past. What now, at last? Is it your pleasure to go under the Law, if Christ did not so much abolish it as fulfill it? Is it your pleasure to be circumcised—that is, to mark the private parts on the private parts—and to believe that God delights in such sacraments? Is it your pleasure to take up the leisure of the Sabbaths, and to insert your hands into the chains of Saturn? Is it your pleasure, to glut the appetite of a Jewish demon (for it is not God's), to slaughter with knives now bulls, now rams, now even goats—not to say men too?—and, on account of which we hate idols, to practice that now more cruelly under the Prophets and the Law? Is it your pleasure, finally, to reckon certain of these deadly foods clean, and to hold others among the unclean and contaminated, of which the Law and the Prophets assert pork to be the more defiling?

You will surely deny that any of these things must be done by us if we wish to persevere in being what we are: since indeed you hear Christ saying that he who has been circumcised becomes doubly a son of Gehenna (Mt 23:15). You see, too, that he himself neither kept the Sabbath nor anywhere commanded it to be kept. About foods likewise you hear him asserting that a man is defiled by none of the things that enter the mouth, but rather that the things which proceed from the mouth pollute him (See Mt 15:11). About sacrifices likewise his frequent statement is that God wishes mercy, not sacrifice (See Mt 9:13; 12:7). If, then, these things are so, where will that be—that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them? And if he said it, either he said it meaning something else, or—which be far from us—he said it lying, or he did not say it at all. But that Jesus lied, let no one say, at least no Christian; and so either it was said otherwise, or it was not said at all.

3. And yet, for my part, the Manichean faith has already made me safe against the constraint of this chapter—the faith which from the beginning persuaded me not to believe indiscriminately all the things that are read as written in the Savior's name, but to test whether they are true, whether sound, whether uncorrupted: for there are very many tares which a certain night-roaming sower has scattered, to the contamination of the good seed, among almost all the Scriptures (See Mt 13:25). And therefore not even here would this statement frighten me, although it carries before it the inscription of a revered name; because it is still permitted me, on principle, to test whether this too is the daytime and good sower's, or that nocturnal and most wicked one's. But you, who believe everything rashly, who condemn reason, nature's gift, out of men—you, for whom to judge between true and false is a scruple, and for whom to separate good from its contrary is no less a terror than madness is to infants—what will you do, when necessity drives you into the strait of this chapter? I mean, when a Jew, or someone else not ignorant of this statement, asks you why you do not keep the precepts of the Law and the Prophets, since Christ says he came not to abolish them but to fulfill them? You will surely be compelled either to succumb to a vain superstition, or to profess the chapter false, or to deny that you are a disciple of Christ.

4. AUGUSTINE replied: Since you repeat things already so often hissed off and convicted, we too, by whom we convicted them, will not be loath to repeat. Christians do not perform those things out of the Law and the Prophets by which were signified these things they do perform. For those were figures of things to come, which, once the things themselves had been revealed and made present through Christ, had to be removed—so that by this very fact too, that these were removed, the Law and the Prophets might be fulfilled.

For there too it is written that God would give a New Testament: not such as I gave to their fathers (See Jer 31:32). For that people, on account of their stony heart, had received many precepts more suited to themselves than good, by which, nonetheless, things to come might be figured and prophesied; but at that time they were observed by men who did not understand them. But when the things signified to them came and were laid open, those things are no longer commanded to be done, but are read to be understood.

Hence there it is said, concerning this future matter too: I will take from them the heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh (Ezek 11:19)—that is, not a heart without sense, but a heart with sense. Whence the Apostle drew what he says: not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart (2 Cor 3:3). For what else did he say but "a heart of flesh"? Since, then, this too had been foretold, it would rather be the case that, if these things were not removed from our observance, the Law and the Prophets would not be fulfilled, because what they foretold would not come to pass; but when this too happens, by that very thing they are understood to be fulfilled, by which they seem to you not to be fulfilled.

5. Nor does your insult frighten us, that you call the leisure of the Sabbaths "the chains of Saturn." For it is vain and silly; nor would it have come into your mind to say this, were it not that you worship the sun on the day they call the Sun's day. But just as we call that same day the Lord's day, and on it venerate not this sun but the resurrection of the Lord, so the leisure of the Sabbaths was observed by the fathers without any veneration of Saturn, at the time when it had to be observed thus: for it was a shadow of things to come, as the Apostle bears witness (See Col 2:17). For on these days, whose sevenfold number recurs in a cycle, the gentiles imposed the names of their gods—of whom the Apostle says that they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25). In this respect you too imitate them, except that with them you adore the two brighter luminaries, though not the other stars with them. But they imposed the names of their gods on the months also. For in honor of Romulus, since they believed him the son of Mars, they dedicated the first month to Mars and called it March. And then April—not from the name of any god of theirs, but from the thing itself, as it were Aperilis, because then most of the bud opens (aperitur) into flower. Then the third month, May, because they worship Maia, the mother of Mercury, as a goddess. Then the fourth, June, from Juno. Then the rest, up to December, they named from numbers. But of these, Quintilis and Sextilis were named after the names of men to whom they had decreed divine honors, July and August: for the seventh, September, and the rest, as I said, up to December, are designated by names of numbers in order. Further, January was named from Janus, February from the Februa, the sacred rites of the Luperci. Do you wish, then, that you too be said to worship Mars in the month of March? For in that month you celebrate your Bema with great festivity. But if you suppose it is permitted to you in the month of March to consider something else, not Mars, why do you try to import Saturn into the divine Scriptures from the seventh day—which was named the Sabbath from rest—because the gentiles called that day Saturn's day? Surely you now see with how great impiety you rave.

6. As for the sacrifices of animals, who of us is unaware that they were imposed as suited to a perverse people rather than offered to a God who desired them? But nonetheless even in these there were figures of us; for our cleansing, and God's propitiation toward us, is impossible without blood. But the truth of those figures is Christ, by whose blood we have been redeemed and cleansed. For in the figures of the divine words, he was called a bull on account of the power of the cross, with whose horns he tossed the impious; and a ram, on account of the primacy of innocence; and a goat, on account of the likeness of sinful flesh, that from sin he might condemn sin (See Rom 8:3); and whatever other kind of sacrifice you mention more explicitly, in that too I will show you that Christ was foretold. Wherefore, whether circumcision, or the Sabbath, or the distinction of foods, or the immolation of sacrifices—all these were figures of us and prophecies, which Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill, since he fulfilled the things that were foretold by them. Consider whom you contradict: with the Apostle, from the Apostle I say it: All these things were figures of us (1 Cor 10:6).

7. For just as Mani taught you an impious perversity, that from the Gospel, which does not hinder your heresy, you accept this, but what hinders it you do not accept, so the Apostle taught us a devout provision: that whoever announces to us beside what we have received, let him be anathema (See Gal 1:8–9). Hence the catholic Christians number you too among the tares, because the Lord explained what the tares are—not certain false things inserted into the true Scriptures, as you interpret it, but men, sons of the evil one, that is, imitators of diabolical falsehood (See Mt 13:39). Nor do they believe everything rashly; and therefore they certainly do not believe Mani and the other heretics. Nor do they condemn reason out of men; rather, what you call reason they convict of being error. Nor do they think it impious to judge between true and false; therefore they judge your sect most false, but the catholic faith most true. Nor do they fear to separate good from its contrary; rather, they understand that evil is not a nature, since it is against nature—not some nation of darkness or other, born and rebelling from its own beginning against the divine realms, which truly brought a greater terror upon your god than madness brings to infants; for you say that he, lest he behold his own members seized and laid waste by its onset, set up a veil against himself.

Accordingly, they suffer no straits from this chapter, as though they did not keep the precepts of the Law and the Prophets: for both, from the grace of Christ, they have the lawful love of God and neighbor, on which two precepts the whole Law and the Prophets depend (See Mt 22:40); and whatever things there were figuratively prophesied—whether in deeds done, or in the celebrations of sacraments, or in modes of speech—they recognize as fulfilled in Christ and the Church. Whence we neither succumb to a vain superstition, nor say that the evangelical chapter is false, nor deny that we are Christ's disciples: because, by that reasoning of the truth which I have so often set forth according to my strength, he came not to abolish, but to fulfill, no other Law and no other Prophets than those which the catholic authority holds.

1. FAUSTUS said: I came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17).

Behold, I now agree that it was said. Yet it must be asked why Jesus said this—whether for the sake of soothing the fury of the Jews, who, seeing their own sacrosanct things trodden underfoot by him, were indignant and reckoned him, as impious and unsound, not even to be heard, much less to be followed; or in order to instruct and form us who from among the gentiles believed in him, to take up patiently and obediently the yoke of the commandments that the Law of the Jews and the Prophets would impose on our necks. But I do not believe that even you yourself suppose that Jesus uttered this word in order to bind us to the Law of the Hebrews and the Prophets. And on this account, if this was not the cause of saying it, that other must be, which I mentioned. For no one is unaware that the Jews always lay in wait, fiercely, against the words and works of Christ. Since from these they gathered that their Law and Prophets were being abolished by him, they were necessarily indignant; and on this account it would not be beside the point that he said, for the sake of repressing their fury, that they should not suppose he had come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. And in this very thing he neither lied nor deceived: for he named the Law indifferently and absolutely.

2. Now there are three kinds of laws: one, indeed, that of the Hebrews, which Paul calls the law of sin and death (See Rom 8:2). Another, that of the gentiles, which he calls natural: for, he says, the gentiles by nature do what the Law requires; and not having such a law, they are a law to themselves, who show the work of the Law written in their hearts (Rom 2:14–15). The third kind of law is truth, which the Apostle, signifying it likewise, expresses when he says: For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). Since, then, there are three laws, and Jesus asserts to us that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, it requires no small care and diligence to understand of which of them he spoke.

Likewise the prophets: some are of the Jews, some of the gentiles, some of the truth. But about those of the Jews no one would inquire, for it is well known. And if anyone is in doubt about those of the gentiles, let him hear Paul, who, writing to Titus about the Cretans, says: One of their own prophets said: The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies (Titus 1:12). And on this account there is no need to doubt that the gentiles too have their prophets. And that the truth also has its prophets, the same Paul signifies, as does Jesus too. Jesus, indeed, where he says: Behold, I send to you wise men and prophets, and some of them you will kill in each place (Mt 23:34). And Paul, when he says: The Lord himself appointed first apostles, then prophets (1 Cor 12:28; Eph 4:11).

3. Since, then, the Law is threefold, and the Prophets threefold, of which of them Jesus spoke is not sufficiently clear; yet it is possible to conjecture from what follows. For if he had at once named circumcision, and the Sabbaths and sacrifices and Hebrew observances, and had brought forward something into them for the sake of fulfilling, there would be no doubt that he had spoken of the Law of the Jews and the Prophets, that he came not to abolish them but to fulfill them. But where he mentions none of these, but reviews only the more ancient precepts—that is, You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not swear falsely—and these were of old among the nations, as is easy to prove, promulgated long ago through Enoch and Seth and the rest of the righteous like them, to whom illustrious angels handed them down for the sake of tempering the savagery in men—to whom would it not seem that he spoke of the law of the truth and its prophets?

Finally, his fulfillment is proved with respect to these very things which he promised. For what does he say? You have heard that it was said to the ancients: You shall not kill; but I say to you, do not even be angry—this is fulfillment. You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you, do not even lust—this is fulfillment. It was said: You shall not swear falsely; but I say to you, do not even swear—this likewise is fulfillment. For in these he both strengthens the earlier things and adds what was lacking.

But where he seemed to name certain things of the Jews, those indeed he did not fulfill, but even uprooted utterly by commanding the contraries. For what follows? You have heard that it was said: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; but I say to you: Whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also—this now is destruction. It was said, he says, You shall love your friend and hate your enemy; but I say to you: Love your enemies, and pray for your persecutors—this likewise is destruction. It was said: Whoever wishes to put away his wife, let him give her a writ of divorce; but I say: Whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, makes her commit adultery, and he will be an adulterer if he afterward marries another (Mt 5:21–44). These, then, are the precepts manifestly of Moses, and therefore destroyed; those others belong to the ancient righteous, and on this account fulfilled. But if it pleases you too to understand it thus, it will not be beside the point that Jesus said he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. If this exposition of ours displeases you, seek another—only beware lest you be compelled to call Jesus a liar, or it become necessary for you to become a Jew: lest even now you persist in abolishing the Law which he himself did not abolish.

4. And yet, if any of the Nazoreans—whom others call Symmachians—were to object this to me, namely, that Jesus said he came not to abolish the Law, I would for a while have hesitated, uncertain what to answer him. And not without reason: for such a man came beset with the Law and the Prophets, in body and mind alike. For men of this sort, of whom I speak, both bear circumcision and observe the Sabbath, and abstain from pork and the rest of such things as the Law commanded, under the profession of the Christian name—deceived themselves too, as may be understood, by this very chapter as you are, because Christ said he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Wherefore, since with such men I would have no small contest, as I said, until I demolished the difficulty of this chapter, I shall by no means fear to engage with you, who rely on no strength and provoke rather by impudence, so that I think myself more easily tested by you than compelled to believe that Christ said what I do not see that you yourself believed. For you, putting forward none of the things by which the Law and the Prophets might seem not abolished but fulfilled, reproach me as a sluggard and a transgressor, on the ground of this chapter's objection. Or do you too now glory in that obscene little seal of the mutilated groin, like a Jew or a Nazorean? Or do you raise an eyebrow over the observance of the Sabbaths? Or do you rejoice, conscious of yourself, over abstinence from pork? Or, finally, do you exult that you have glutted God with the blood of victims and the reeking smoke of the holocausts of the Jews? But if you have done none of these things, why do you contend that Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it?

5. Wherefore I give unceasing thanks to my teacher, who held me back when I was likewise slipping, so that I am today a Christian. For I too, when I read this chapter incautiously, as you do, had almost gone over to the plan of becoming a Jew. And not without reason: for if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, and fulfillment is never spoken of an empty vessel, but of a half-full one, it seemed to me that only an Israelite could become a Christian—one who, filled for the most part with the Law and the Prophets, might come to Christ to be filled up with him, of whom he seemed still more capable; provided that he too did not abolish the earlier things; otherwise this would not be a fulfilling with respect to him, but an emptying. But I, coming from the gentiles, thought I had approached Christ in vain, because I brought nothing of the kind that he could, by his additions, fulfill in me. Seeking, then, what that earlier measure might be, I find Sabbaths, circumcision, sacrifices, new moons, washings, eatings of unleavened bread, distinctions of foods and of drinks and of garments, and others which it is long to run through. I supposed, then, that this was it—nor anything else—which Christ said he came not to abolish but to fulfill.

And not without reason: for what is the Law without commandments? What are the Prophets without prefaces? In addition to these, I also find a bitter curse pronounced there against those who do not continue in all the things written in the book of that Law, to do them (See Deut 27:26). Fearing, then, the curse from that side, as though God's, and hearing from this side Christ, as though his son, saying that he came not to abolish those things but to fulfill them, see whether anything could now hinder my becoming a Jew. But from this danger the venerable faith of the Manicheans snatched me.

6. Yet I ask with what confidence you object these things, or why you suppose that to be against me alone which seems no less contrary to you. If it is not Christ's to abolish the Law and the Prophets, then surely it is not the Christians' either.

Why, then, do you abolish them? Or do you gradually confess that you are not Christians? Why do you, of all the Law and the Prophets, profane with every kind of work that sacrosanct day of the Sabbaths, on which they testify that God, the very maker of the world, rested (See Gen 2:2)—fearing neither the penalty of death which he appointed against its violators, nor the disgrace of the curse? Why do you protect your loins from that disgraceful seal of circumcision, honored by all the Law and the Prophets, and especially by Abraham after his renowned faith—especially since the God of the Jews declares that everyone of his people will perish who is not marked beforehand with this ignominy (See Gen 17:9–14)? Why do you spurn the legal observances of the sacrifices, which neither Moses and the Prophets under the Law, nor Abraham under his faith, held in second place? Why do you defile your souls with the indifference of foods, if, as you believe, Christ came to abolish none of these things, but to fulfill them? Why do you violate the yearly rite of unleavened bread, and the sacred rite of slaying the lamb, which the Law and the Prophets command to be observed forever? Why, finally, do you fail to avoid breaking in upon the new moons, and washings, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the rest of such carnal sacraments of the Law and the Prophets, if Christ in no way destroyed them?

Wherefore I would not say without reason that, if you wish your account of this contempt to hold together, you must either deny that you are disciples of Christ, or at last confess that he himself destroyed all these earlier things. And when you have confessed this, then that other thing follows too: that you must either confess it to be falsely written, as though he said he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, or confess that this meant something far other than you suppose.

7. AUGUSTINE replied: Since you now agree that Christ said, I came not to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Mt 5:17)—for it seems hard to you to come against the evangelical authority; let it seem hard to you too to come against the Apostle, who says, All these things were figures of us (1 Cor 10:6); and who likewise says of Christ that in him there was not yes and no, but in him was yes: for as many as are the promises of God, in him they are yes (2 Cor 1:19–20)—that is, in him displayed, in him fulfilled: then, without any fog, you will see both what Law he came to fulfill, and in what manner he fulfilled it. Nor will you go on being stretched out over the three kinds of law and the three kinds of prophets, seeking a way out and not finding it. For it is manifest, and clearer than light, and the Scripture of the New Testament too often bears witness, what Law and which Prophets Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill. For it is the very Law which, given through Moses, became grace and truth through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:17). It is, I say, the very Law given through Moses, of whom Christ says: For he wrote about me (Jn 5:46).

For surely it is the very Law which entered in, that the offense might abound (Rom 5:20)—which, understanding nothing, you are accustomed to have on your lips to its reproach. There, then, read and see that it is the very one of which it is said: And so the Law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did then that which is good become death to me? Far be it. But sin, that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through the good (Rom 7:12–13). For the Law did not command the offense, so that, when it entered in, the offense might abound; but the proud, attributing much to themselves, had been made guilty even of transgression by the addition of the holy and just and good commandment—so that, humbled in this way, they might learn that it belongs to grace, through faith, that they should no longer be subject to the Law through guilt, but associated with the Law through righteousness.

For the same Apostle says: Before faith came, we were kept guarded under the Law, shut up unto that faith which was afterward revealed. And so the Law, he says, was our tutor in Christ Jesus; but after faith came, we are no longer under a tutor (Gal 3:23–25)—because the guilt of the Law does not bind us, now freed through grace. For before, being humbled, we received spiritual grace, the letter did nothing but kill us, commanding what we could not fulfill. Whence he says the same: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). Again, the same Apostle's words are: For if a Law had been given that could give life, righteousness would altogether be from the Law; but the Scripture shut up all things under sin, that the promise from faith in Jesus Christ might be given to believers (Gal 3:21–22). Likewise his own words are: For what was impossible for the Law, in that it was weakened through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit (Rom 8:3–4). Behold what it is: I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.

For since the Law bound even the proud by the guilt of transgression, increasing sin when it commands what they cannot fulfill, the righteousness of that same Law is fulfilled through the grace of the spirit, in those who learn from Christ to be meek and humble of heart—who came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Then, since even for those set under grace it is difficult in this mortal life to fulfill in every way what is written in the Law, You shall not covet (Exod 20:17), he, made a priest through the sacrifice of his own flesh, obtains for us pardon, in this way too fulfilling the Law; so that what, through our weakness, we are less able to do, may be recovered through his perfection, whose members we, the head, have been made. Whence John says: My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin; and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just; he is the expiation for our sins (1 Jn 2:1–2).

8. The prophecies, moreover, he fulfilled thus, when in him the truth of God's promises came to be. This I mentioned a little before from the Apostle, who says: For as many as are the promises of God, in him: yes. The same again says: For I say that Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the sake of the truth of God, to confirm the promises of the fathers (Rom 15:8). Therefore what was promised in the Prophets, whether openly or through figures—of speech or of action—was fulfilled in him, who came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. But this you do not understand: for if certain deeds and celebrations, which were figures foretelling things to come, were still performed by Christians, nothing would be signified except that the things then foretold by those figures had not yet come. For what is still foretold as to come either has not yet come, or, if it has already come, is foretold superfluously or deceitfully. Wherefore, from the very thing by which it seems to you that Christ did not fulfill the Prophets—namely, that certain things are not done by Christians which through the Prophets were instituted to be done by the Hebrews—from that very thing he is rather proved to have fulfilled them. For whatever was prophesied through figures of this kind has been so far fulfilled that it is no longer prophesied through them.

To this pertains also what the Lord himself says: The Law and the Prophets were until John (Lk 16:16). For the Law, which shut up transgressors in abundant guilt unto that faith which was afterward revealed, became grace through Jesus Christ, through whom grace superabounded; and on this account it was fulfilled through the grace that frees, which was not being fulfilled through the letter that commands. Likewise, in the Law itself, all prophecy, which promised the coming of the Savior not only by words but also by the figures of certain actions, became truth through Jesus Christ. For the Law was given through Moses; but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:17). From his coming the kingdom of God began to be announced: because the Law and the Prophets were until John—the Law, to make guilty those who would desire salvation; the Prophets, to promise the Savior.

But that other prophets arose in the Church after Christ's ascension, who is unaware? Of whom Paul says: And some he appointed in the Church, first apostles, then prophets, third teachers (1 Cor 12:28), and the rest. It was not, then, of those that it was said, The Law and the Prophets were until John, but of those who prophesied the first coming of Christ—which coming, once fulfilled, surely could no longer be prophesied.

9. Accordingly, when you ask why a Christian is now no longer circumcised in the flesh, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian is now no longer circumcised for this very reason, that what was prophesied by that same circumcision Christ has now fulfilled. For the stripping off of the carnal generation, which was figured in that act, has now been fulfilled in Christ's resurrection—which, as it will be in our resurrection, is commended in the sacrament of Baptism. For neither ought the sacrament of new life to be removed entirely, since there still remains in us the future resurrection of the dead; and yet the same had to be changed for the better, with Baptism succeeding, because that has now happened which had never happened before: that, in the resurrection of Christ, the example of the future eternal life was offered to us.

When you ask why a Christian does not observe the leisure of the Sabbath, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian does not observe it for this reason, that what was prophesied by that figure Christ has now fulfilled. For in him we have the Sabbath, who said: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, 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 (Mt 11:28–29).

10. When you ask why a Christian does not observe the distinction of foods which is commanded in the Law, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian does not observe it for this reason, that what was prophesied by those figures Christ has now fulfilled, not admitting to his body—which he has predestined among his saints to eternal life—whatever was signified in the conduct of men by those animals.

When you ask why a Christian does not, by slaying animals, offer to God sacrifices of flesh and blood, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian ought now all the more not to offer these, because the things which by such figures of things were being prophesied to him, Christ has fulfilled by the immolation of his own flesh and blood.

When you ask why a Christian does not observe the unleavened bread as the Jews do, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian all the more does not observe this, because what was prophesied by that figure Christ has fulfilled, showing the new life with the leaven of the old life purged out (See 1 Cor 5:7).

When you ask why a Christian does not celebrate the Passover with the flesh of a lamb, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian no longer celebrates the Passover thus, because what was foretold by that figure, Christ, the unspotted lamb, has fulfilled by his passion.

When you ask for what cause a Christian does not celebrate the new moons commanded in the Law, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply: On the contrary, a Christian now does not celebrate these, because what they were celebrated to foretell, Christ has now fulfilled. For the celebration of the new moon foretold the new creation, of which the Apostle says: If anyone, then, is a new creation in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, they have been made new (See 2 Cor 5:17).

When you ask why a Christian does not observe those washings of each several uncleanness which are commanded in the Law, if Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, I reply that a Christian rather does not observe these because they were figures of things to come, which Christ has fulfilled. For he came to bury us together with himself through Baptism into death, so that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too might walk in newness of life (See Rom 6:4).

When you ask what the cause is that the Feast of Tabernacles is not a solemnity of Christians, if the Law was fulfilled by Christ and not abolished, I reply that the tabernacle of God is his faithful, in whom, joined and as it were fitted together in love, he deigns to dwell; and that therefore it is rather not observed by Christians, because Christ has now fulfilled in his Church what that figure prophetically promised.

11. And now indeed, for the sake of the business undertaken, lest they be passed over in silence, we have touched on these things with as much brevity as we could. But discussed member by member and point by point, they have made great and many books, showing in them nothing other than that Christ was prophesied: so that it comes about that all the things you suppose are not observed by Christians because Christ abolished them are rather found not observed by Christians because Christ fulfilled them. For the very observance of such figures was a foretelling of Christ. Whence what wonder is it, what absurdity—indeed, what is not fitting and consistent—if, after his coming, whatever was being done in order to foretell his coming ceased? The figures of things, then, which were observed for this purpose, that by their very observance the Christ to come might be prophesied, ought so far not to be supposed unfulfilled through Christ's coming because they are not observed when he has come, that, unless they were already fulfilled through Christ's coming, they would still be observed.

But into no name of religion, whether true or false, can men be curdled together, unless they are bound by some fellowship of visible signs or sacraments—the force of which sacraments is inexpressibly great, and therefore, when despised, makes men sacrilegious. For that is impiously despised without which piety cannot be brought to completion.

12. Nevertheless, because the visible sacraments of piety can be present even in the impious, as we read that even Simon the magician had holy Baptism (See Acts 8:13), such people become as the Apostle says: Having a form of piety, but denying its power (2 Tim 3:5). But the power of piety is the end of the commandment, that is, love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned (See 1 Tim 1:5). Whence the apostle Peter, when he spoke of the sacrament of the ark, in which the house of Noah was freed from the flood, says: So too Baptism, by a like form, saves you. And lest they suppose the visible sacrament, through which they had a form of piety, sufficient for themselves, while by living ruinously through evil conduct they denied its power, he immediately added: not the putting off of the filth of the flesh, but the appeal of a good conscience (1 Pet 3:21).

13. Accordingly, the first sacraments, which were observed and celebrated according to the Law, were foretellings of the Christ to come; and when Christ had fulfilled them by his coming, they were removed—and removed for this reason, that they were fulfilled; for he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. And others were instituted, greater in power, better in usefulness, easier in performance, fewer in number, as befits the righteousness of faith revealed, and the yoke of slavery removed from the sons of God called into freedom (See Gal 5:1, 13)—a yoke that was suited to a hard people given over to the flesh.

14. Nevertheless, if the ancient righteous, who understood that by those sacraments was foretold the coming revelation of the faith—from which, although still covered and hidden, yet by the gift of piety understood, they too even then lived (for in this life no one can be righteous except one who lives by faith (See Rom 1:17))—if, then, the ancient righteous were prepared to suffer all hard and dreadful things for the sake of those foretelling sacraments and figures of things not yet fulfilled, and very many did suffer them; if we praise the three young men and Daniel, because they were unwilling to be contaminated by the king's table (See Dan 1:8), which was against the sacrament of that time; if we set forth the Maccabees with vast admiration, because they were unwilling to touch foods which Christians now lawfully use (See 2 Macc 7), since at that time, for the prophetic season, it was not permitted: how much more now, for the Baptism of Christ, for the Eucharist of Christ, for the sign of Christ, ought a Christian to be readier to endure all things, since those were promises of things to be fulfilled, and these are signs of things fulfilled?

For what is still promised to the Church—that is, to the body of Christ—and is preached in its manifestation, has already surely been fulfilled in the very head of the body, the Savior, that is, in the very Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (See 1 Tim 2:5). For what is promised but eternal life from resurrection from the dead? This has already been fulfilled in that flesh, in that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (See Jn 1:14). At that time, then, the faith too was hidden; for all the righteous and holy even of those times believed the same things and hoped the same things; and all those sacraments and all that rite of holy things were promissory. But now the faith has been revealed, in which the people was shut up when it was kept guarded under the Law (See Gal 3:23); and what is promised to the faithful at the judgment has already been fulfilled by way of example, through him who came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them.

15. Wherefore it is indeed inquired among the searchers of the holy Scriptures whether the faith of a Christ who was to suffer and to rise—which they learned either by revelations or understood in the Prophets—profited the ancient righteous as much as the faith of a Christ who has suffered and been raised now profits us; or whether the very shedding of the blood of the Lamb of God, which was done, as he himself says, for many unto the remission of sins (Mt 26:28), gave or added some usefulness and purification even to those who, believing this would happen, had departed from this life before it happened; and whether his death visited even the dead for their liberation. But to discuss this question now by treating it, or to define anything found in it even by confirming it, is both long and not necessary for this work.

16. For the present, against the slanderous ignorance of Faustus, it will suffice to demonstrate with how great an error they rave who suppose that, when signs and sacraments are changed, the very things too are different which the prophetic rite foretold as promised, and which the evangelical rite announced as fulfilled; or who judge that, when the things are the same, they ought not to have been announced as fulfilled by sacraments other than those by which they were foretold as still to be fulfilled.

For if the sounds of the words by which we speak are changed according to the time, and the same thing is expressed in one way as to be done, in another as done—just as those very two words I said, "to be done" and "done," sounded neither with equal intervals of duration, nor with the same or as many letters and syllables—what wonder is it if by some seals of the mysteries the passion and resurrection of Christ was promised as future, and by others is announced as now done;

seeing that the very words "future" and "done," "about to suffer" and "having suffered," "about to rise" and "has risen," could neither be drawn out equally nor sound alike?

For what else are the various bodily sacraments but, as it were, certain visible words—sacrosanct indeed, yet changeable and temporal? For God is eternal; yet the water, and all that bodily action which is performed when we baptize, both happens and passes away, and is not eternal: where again even those syllables, swiftly sounding and passing—when "God" is said—unless they are spoken, no consecration takes place. All these things happen and pass away, sound and pass away; yet the power which works through them remains continually, and the spiritual gift which is imparted through them is eternal.

He, therefore, who says, "If Christ had not abolished the Law and the Prophets, those sacraments of the Law and the Prophets would remain in the gatherings and celebrations of Christians," can say: "If Christ had not abolished the Law and the Prophets, one would still be promised as about to be born, to suffer, and to rise"—since he rather did not abolish these things, but fulfilled them, in that no one is now promised as about to be born, to suffer, to rise, which those sacraments once proclaimed, but it is announced that he has been born, has suffered, has risen, which these sacraments performed by Christians now proclaim. He, therefore, who came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them, by that very fulfillment took away the things through which there was still being promised, as to be fulfilled, what now stands fulfilled—as if he were to take away these words, "about to be born, about to suffer, about to rise," which were rightly spoken when these things were future, and were to institute the saying, "He has been born, has suffered, has risen," which, when those things are fulfilled and on that account removed, are rightly spoken.

17. As, then, with those words, so with those sacraments of the former people: because, through him who came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them, they have now been fulfilled, therefore they had to be removed and changed. Which, for the first Christians who had believed from among the Jews—until, against so long-standing a custom, they should gradually be persuaded and brought to a perfect understanding, and because they had been so born and reared—the Apostles allowed them to keep the ancestral rite and tradition; and they admonished those for whom this was needful, that they should accommodate themselves to the slowness and manners of those people.

Hence it is that the Apostle even circumcised Timothy, born of a Jewish mother and a Greek father, on account of those to whom he had come with such men (See Acts 16:1–3); and he himself kept a custom of this kind among them, not by a deceitful pretense, but by a prudent counsel. For to those so born and so reared these things were not harmful, although they were no longer necessary for signifying things to come. It was rather more harmful to forbid them as harmful in those men among whom they had to last. For Christ, who had come to fulfill all those prophecies, had found them initiated in this way; so that thenceforth those who were held by no such necessity, but came together from the opposite wall as it were—that is, from uncircumcision—to that cornerstone which is Christ (See Eph 2:14, 20), were not compelled to any such things. But if those who had come from circumcision, and were still given to such sacraments, of their own accord wished, as Timothy did, to render this conformity, they were not forbidden.

But if in works of the Law of this kind they supposed that their hope and salvation was contained, they were forbidden as from certain ruin. Hence comes that saying of the Apostle: Behold, I Paul say to you, that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing (Gal 5:2). Circumcised, that is, as they themselves wished, as had been urged upon them by certain corrupt men that without these works of the Law they could not be saved (Acts 15:1). For when the gentiles came to the faith of Christ—chiefly through the preaching of the apostle Paul—as they ought to have come, so that they would be burdened by no observances of this kind (both because these unaccustomed things, especially circumcision, would, by frightening those advanced in age, deter them from the faith; and because, not being so born as to be steeped in such sacraments, if they became proselytes in the old manner, Christ would seem to be still promised, as to come, through those mysteries);

since, then, they came to the faith in the way the gentiles now had to come, those who had come from circumcision—not understanding why those things had been permitted to themselves, and why they were not to be imposed on the gentiles—had begun to disturb the Church with certain carnal seditions, because the gentiles, approaching the people of God, were not solemnly made proselytes by the circumcision of the flesh and by the other observances of the Law of this kind. And among these were some who insisted greatly that this be done, because they feared the Jews among whom they lived. Against these the apostle Paul wrote many things; for he even corrected, with a brotherly rebuke, Peter, who had been drawn into their pretense (See Gal 2:14).

But after the Apostles, gathered together into one, also decreed by their counsel that the gentiles were not to be compelled to works of the Law of this kind (See Acts 15:6–11), it displeased certain Christians from the circumcision, who could not discern in their minds that those alone were not to be forbidden such observances whom the faith, once revealed, had found already steeped in them—so that in those whom it had already held before the fulfillment of the prophecy, the prophetic action itself might be brought to completion; lest, if it were removed from them too, it should seem disapproved rather than ended; but if it were imposed on the gentiles also, it should be thought either not to have been instituted for the sake of promising Christ, or to be promising Christ still.

Thus the first people of God, before Christ came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, were commanded to observe all those things which promised him: free in those who understood to what they pertained, but slaves in those who did not understand this. But the later people, coming to the faith by which it was now preached that Christ had come, had suffered, and had risen, in those men whom the same faith had found already instructed in such sacraments, were neither compelled to observe these things nor forbidden; but in those who, empty of such things, held by no necessity of birth, custom, or conformity, had believed, they were even forbidden—so that through them it might now begin to appear that all those things had been instituted for the sake of promising Christ; and that, with him come and fulfilling these promises, they now ought to cease. This tempering and governance of the Holy Spirit, working through the Apostles, having displeased certain believers from the circumcision who did not understand these things, they remained in that perversity, so that they even compelled the gentiles to Judaize. These are they whom Faustus mentioned under the name of Symmachians or Nazoreans, who endure even to our times, now indeed in a small remnant, but still, even in that fewness, persisting.

18. What, then, do these people have, by which to slander the Law and the Prophets, that Christ came to abolish them rather than to fulfill them, because Christians do not observe the things commanded there—when they fail to observe only those things by which Christ was being promised, and fail to observe them all the more because Christ has now fulfilled those same promises, and the things already fulfilled are no longer promised; and their promissory signs had to be ended in those whom the faith of a Christ who fulfills these things had found already steeped in them? For do Christians not observe what is in that Scripture: Hear, O Israel; the Lord your God is one God (Deut 6:4); You shall not make for yourself an idol, and the rest of this kind? Do Christians not observe what is said there: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain? Do Christians not observe the very Sabbath, which pertains to the understanding of true rest? Do Christians not pay honor to parents, which is commanded there? Do Christians not refrain from fornications, or murders, or thefts, or false testimonies, or coveting a neighbor's wife, or coveting a neighbor's property—all of which are written in that Law (Exod 20:4–17)? These are precepts of morals, those are sacraments of things promised: these are fulfilled through assisting grace, those through truth rendered; both through Christ, who both always bestows that grace, now also revealing it, and both promised that truth then and displays it now: because the Law was given through Moses; but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:17). In short, these things, which are preserved in the conscience of one living rightly, are fulfilled by faith working through love (Gal 5:6); but those which were engaged in a promissory signification have passed away with the things rendered. So these too were not abolished but fulfilled; for Christ showed them not void nor deceitful, when he displayed what was promised by their signification.

19. It is not, then, as Faustus supposes, that the Lord Jesus fulfilled certain things which had already been said by the ancient righteous before the Law of Moses—such as, You shall not kill, which he did not refute by a contrary but rather strengthened, when he recalled men even from anger and from reviling (See Exod 20:13; Mt 5:21–22)—but abolished certain things which seemed proper to the law of the Hebrews, such as, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, which he seems to have taken away rather than confirmed, when he says: But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also (Exod 21:24; Mt 5:38–39), and the rest. For we say that even these things, which they suppose Christ abolished, by introducing as it were contraries, were both well instituted then for the time, and now not abolished by Christ but fulfilled.

20. Accordingly, I first ask these people whether those ancient righteous men, Enoch and Seth (for these especially Faustus mentions), and any others—not only before Moses, but any who lived before Abraham—were angry with a brother without cause, or said to a brother, "You fool." For if they did not say it, why did they not also teach such things? But if they did teach such things, I ask how Christ fulfilled their righteousness and doctrine by adding: But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother; or whoever says, Raca; or whoever says, You fool, will be liable—to the judgment, or to the council, or to the fire of Gehenna (Mt 5:22)—since they too lived in the same manner and admonished men to live in the same manner? Or did those righteous men not know that anger must be bridled, and that a brother is not to be provoked with insolent reviling? Or did they know it, but were unable to abstain from these things? Then they were liable to Gehenna: how, then, were they righteous? For surely you do not dare to call their righteousness either ignorant of the things pertaining to its duty, or intemperate, to such a degree as to make them liable to Gehenna. Why, then, would Christ fulfill that law, according to which the ancient righteous lived, by adding these things, since their righteousness too could not exist without them? Or will you say that headlong anger and a reckless tongue began, from the time Christ came, to pertain to iniquity, whereas before it was not iniquitous to commit these things in heart or mouth? Just as in certain matters instituted according to the properties of the times, we find that something is now not permitted which before was permitted, or that what before was not permitted is now permitted. You are not so foolish as to say this; but even if you do say it, you will be answered that, according to this understanding, Christ came not to fulfill what was lacking in the ancient law, but to institute a law that did not exist; if saying to a brother, "You fool," not having been unjust among the ancient righteous, Christ now willed it to be so unjust that whoever says this is liable to Gehenna. Accordingly, you have not yet found to what law these things were ever lacking, by whose addition now Christ would fulfill it.

21. Or was the law of not committing adultery, perhaps, half-full among those ancient righteous, until it should be fulfilled by the Lord, who added that no one should look at a woman to lust after her? For thus you recalled the very statement: "You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you, do not even lust. This is fulfillment," you say. Set forth plainly the evangelical words themselves; do not weaken by your own words what was said; and see what you have judged about those most ancient righteous men. You have heard, he says, that it was said: You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Exod 20:14; Mt 5:27–28). Did those righteous men, then—Seth or Enoch, or any like them—commit adultery in their hearts; and either was their heart not the temple of God, or did they commit adultery in the temple of God? But if you do not dare to say this, how did Christ, coming now, fulfill the law of theirs concerning this matter too, which among them was already full even then?

22. As for not swearing (See Exod 20:7; Mt 5:33–37)—since here too you said that their law was fulfilled by Christ—I cannot affirm that the ancient righteous did not swear: for we find that the apostle Paul too swore (See Rom 1:9; Phil 1:8; 2 Cor 1:23). But from your own mouth frequent swearing is not removed, since you swear by the light, which you love along with flies; for that light of minds, which enlightens every man coming into this world (See Jn 1:9), you do not know, except that you can think of it in some part as not utterly foreign to these eyes. And you swear by your lord Mani, who in his native tongue was called Manes; but you, to avoid among the Greeks the name of madness, by inflecting and lengthening the name, added as it were "a pouring," where you slipped the further. For thus one of you explained to me why he was called Manichaeus: namely, that in the Greek language he might seem as it were to pour out manna; for "to pour" is in Greek cheô—in which I do not know what you accomplished, except that you dreamed up your madness for yourselves more expressly. For you did not add one letter in the earlier part of the name, so that "manna" might be recognized, but you added in the latter part two syllables, calling him not Mannichaeus but Manichaeus; so that with such prolix and vain discourses of his he might sound to you as pouring out nothing but madness. Very often you also swear by the Paraclete—not, indeed, that one whom Christ promised to his disciples and sent (See Jn 14:16, 26; 16:7; Acts 2:2–4), but by that very one whom, to interpret his name in Latin, I would call the "madness-pourer." Since, then, you never cease to swear, I would like to know how you understand this part of the Law too, which you wish to be understood as most ancient, that the Lord fulfilled it for you—and the more so on account of the Apostle's oaths. For what authority is yours, even for yourselves, much less for me or any man? Whence I think it is now clear how differently must be taken what Christ says: I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Not, namely, by those additions, which pertain either to the exposition of the ancient statements set forth, or to manner of life, not to fulfillment.

23. For because they did not understand murder except as the destruction of a human body, by which it is deprived of life, the Lord disclosed that every wicked impulse to harm a brother is reckoned in the category of murder. Whence John too says: He who hates his brother is a murderer (1 Jn 3:15). And because they thought that only bodily unlawful union with a woman was called adultery, the Master showed that such lust too is nothing else. Likewise, because to swear falsely is a grave sin, but not to swear is, like swearing truly, no sin; yet he who is not accustomed even to swear is removed further from swearing falsely than he who is prone to swear truly: the Lord preferred that we, even not swearing, should not depart from the truth, rather than that we, swearing truly, should draw near to perjury. And so the Apostle too, in the discourses he is reported to have held, never swore, lest by the habit of swearing he should sometime, even unknowingly, slip into perjury. But in his writings, where there is greater and more deliberate consideration, he is found to have sworn in several places, lest anyone should suppose that one sins even by swearing truly, but should rather understand that the hearts of human frailty are more safely preserved from perjury by not swearing. With these things perceived, we find that not even those things were destroyed, as Faustus supposes, which he wishes to pertain, as it were properly, to Moses.

24. For here too I ask these people why they wish it to be proper to the Law of Moses, what was said to the ancients: You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy (Lev 19:18). Or did not the apostle Paul too call certain men hateful to God (See Rom 1:30)? And surely in this admonition the Lord himself exhorts us to this, that we imitate God. That you may be, he says, sons of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust. It must therefore be asked how it is to be understood that, by the example of God, to whom Paul said certain men are hateful, enemies are to be held in hatred; and again, by the example of God, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad and rains upon the just and the unjust, enemies are to be loved. Thus it will appear that the Lord wished to bring to those who understood badly what was said—You shall hate your enemy—what they did not know at all: that they should love their enemies. But how both are to be observed is long to discuss. But for the present, to these people, who are generally displeased if anyone hates his enemy, we have a word that may press their brow, when we ask them whether their god loves the nation of darkness; or, if enemies are now to be loved because they have a part of good, why we ought not on this account also to hate them, because they have a part of evil. For by that rule this too is resolved, and it is taught that there is no contradiction in what was said in the ancient Scripture, You shall hate your enemy, and in the Gospel, Love your enemies (Mt 5:43–45): namely, that every wicked man, insofar as he is wicked, is to be hated; but insofar as he is a man, is to be loved; so that what we rightly hate in him, that is, the vice, we may reprove, in order that what we rightly love in him, that is, human nature itself, may be freed by the vice's being amended. This, I say, is the rule by which we both hate the enemy on account of what is evil in him, that is, iniquity, and love the enemy on account of what is good in him, that is, the social and rational creature—except that we convict him of being evil not through nature, whether his own or another's, but through his own will. But they suppose man to be evil through the nature of the nation of darkness, which, according to them, the whole of their god feared before he was in part conquered; and by which he was in part so conquered that he was not even wholly freed. Having heard, then, and not understood, what was said to the ancients, You shall hate your enemy, men were carried into hatred of a man, when they ought to have hated nothing but the vice: these the Lord corrects, by saying, Love your enemies; so that he who had already said, I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it, and therefore would not abolish what is written in the Law concerning hatred of an enemy, by commanding us to love our enemies, would compel us to understand in what manner we could both hate one and the same man on account of fault, and love him on account of nature. But this is much for their perverse minds to understand. They are only to be pressed, so that, according to the lost reasoning—or rather the madness—of their slander, they may defend their god, whom they cannot call a lover of the nation of darkness; and therefore by his example they have no way to exhort each man to love his enemy. For they could rather attribute love of an enemy to the very nation of darkness than to their god. For that nation, as they rave, coveted the light near and adjacent to it, and wished to enjoy it, and, in order to enjoy it, planned to invade it. And this is not a fault, when the true and beatifying good is sought. Whence the Lord too says: The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and those who do violence seize it (Mt 11:12). Behold, the nation of darkness, according to their vanity, wished to do violence to and seize the good which it had loved, delighted by its brightness and form; and God did not love it in return, but, detesting in hatred the one wishing to enjoy himself, set about to uproot it utterly. If, then, the evil love the good which they may enjoy, but the good hate the evil lest they be polluted, answer, you Manicheans: which of them fulfill what the Lord says, Love your enemies? Behold, if you wish these to be separate and conflicting statements, your god did what is written in the law of Moses, You shall hate your enemy; and the nation of darkness did what is written in the Gospel, Love your enemies. And yet not even by inventing have you been able to find by what agreement you might settle the question between the light-seeking flies and the light-fleeing cockroaches: for you contend that both are offspring of the nation of darkness. Whence, then, do the former love a light foreign to them, while the latter, shunning this light, are delighted rather by their own origin? Or are flies born more cleanly in fetid sewers than cockroaches in dark bedrooms?

25. Now as for what was said to the ancients, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, how is it contrary to what the Lord says, But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also (Exod 21:24; Mt 5:39), and the rest? Since that ancient saying too was commanded for the purpose of repressing the flames of hatred and of bridling the immoderate minds of the raging. For who is easily content to repay only as much in vengeance as he has received in injury? Do we not see men lightly hurt plotting slaughter, thirsting for blood, and scarcely finding in an enemy's misfortunes wherewith to be satisfied? Who, struck with a fist, does not either stir up lawsuits for the condemnation of him who struck, or, if he wishes to strike back himself, pound the whole man with fists and heels—if not even by snatching up some weapon? To this immoderate and therefore unjust vengeance, then, the law, fixing a just measure, instituted the penalty of retaliation, that is, that each should pay such a punishment as the injury he inflicted. Accordingly, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is not the fuel but the limit of fury—imposed not that what had been quieted might be kindled by it, but lest what was burning might be extended further. For there is a certain just vengeance, and it is justly owed to him who has suffered injury; whence surely, when we forgive, we give away, as it were, something of our own right. Whence too those things are called debts which, in the Lord's Prayer, we are admonished to remit in human fashion, so that ours too may be remitted to us by God (See Mt 6:12). But what is owed, even if it is kindly remitted, is nonetheless not unjustly demanded back. But as in swearing, even he who swears truly draws near to perjury, from which he is far removed who does not swear at all; and although he who swears truly does not sin, yet he who does not swear is further from sin; whence the admonition not to swear is a preservation from the sin of perjury: so, since he sins who through immoderation wishes to be avenged unjustly, but he does not sin who, applying measure, wishes to be avenged justly, he is further from sin who does not wish to be avenged at all. For he sins who exacts beyond what is owed; but he does not sin who exacts what is owed: yet he is far safer from the sin of an unjust exactor who does not exact the debt at all, especially lest he too be compelled to pay a debt by him who has no debt. I too, then, could set these things forth thus: It was said to the ancients, "You shall not avenge yourself unjustly"; but I say, "Do not even avenge yourselves"—this is fulfillment; just as Faustus says of swearing: "It was said: You shall not swear falsely; but I say, do not even swear; this likewise is fulfillment." I too, then, could speak thus, if by these added words it seemed to me that what was lacking in the Law was added by Christ, and not rather that what the Law wished to effect—that no one should sin by avenging himself unjustly—is more safely preserved if he does not avenge himself at all; just as what it wished to effect—that no one should sin by swearing falsely—is more safely preserved if he does not swear. For if An eye for an eye is contrary to Whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also, why is not You shall render to the Lord your oath contrary to Do not swear at all (Exod 20:7; Mt 5:33–37)? And yet Faustus judges the latter not destruction but fulfillment—which here too he ought to have judged. For if "Swear truly" is fulfilled by saying "Do not swear," why is not "Avenge justly" fulfilled by saying "Do not avenge"? Thus I too judge that in both there is a preservation from the sin by which either a falsehood is sworn or vengeance taken unjustly; although this matter of forgoing vengeance altogether avails also for that other end, that by remitting debts of this kind, we too may deserve to be forgiven. But for a hard people a measure first had to be applied, by which it might learn not to go beyond what is owed: so that, with anger tamed—which carries men off to immoderate vengeance—now he who wished might calmly consider what he himself owed, what he desired to be relaxed to him by the Lord, in order that, by this consideration, he might relax the debt to his fellow servant.

26. For that precept too of the Lord, that a wife is not to be put away—although it was said to the ancients, Whoever puts away his wife, let him give her a writ of divorce (Deut 24:1; Mt 5:31–32)—if we look at it carefully, we shall see that it is not contrary. For the Lord set forth what the Law willed, when it commanded one who put away his wife at random to give a writ of divorce. For it did not say, "Whoever wishes, let him put away his wife"—to which it would be contrary not to put her away; but it surely did not wish a wife to be put away by her husband, when it interposed this delay, so that a mind rushing headlong into separation, checked by the writing of the document, might desist, and might consider what an evil it is to put away a wife: especially since, as they report, among the Hebrews it was lawful for no one to write Hebrew letters except the scribes alone, who both professed a more excellent wisdom and, if any of them were endowed with equity and piety, not only professed wisdom but even practiced it. To these, then, who ought to be prudent interpreters of the Law and just dissuaders from separation, the Law wished to send the man whom it commanded to give a writ of divorce, if he put away his wife. For the document could not be written for him except by them, who, by this occasion, would in a manner guide back into their own hands one coming under necessity, with good counsel, and, dealing peaceably between the man and his wife, would urge love and concord. But if so great a hatred intervened that it could not be extinguished and amended, then surely the document would be written: for he would not put away in vain a woman whom he so hated that he could be recalled by no persuasion of the prudent to the love owed to marriage. For if a wife is not loved, she is to be put away. Since, then, she is not to be put away, she is to be loved. But love can be composed by admonishing and persuading, not imposed by compelling the unwilling. This the just and wise scribe ought to do, such as one ought to be in that profession; that he might be resorted to, the discordant husband was commanded to write a document, which a good and prudent man would not write, unless in a mind too averse and perverse the counsel of concord availed nothing. But from you, out of the sacrilegious vanity of your error, I ask why it should displease you to put away a wife, whom you judge ought to be had not for the fidelity of matrimony, but for the crime of concupiscence. For matrimony is so named from this, that a woman ought to marry for no other reason than to become a mother (mater); which is hateful to you. For in this way you suppose that a part of your god, conquered and subdued in battle by the nation of darkness, is bound also by fleshly fetters.

27. But to set forth rather what is now under discussion: if Christ, where, after certain ancient statements set forth, he added, But I say to you, neither fulfilled the law of the first men by this addition of words, nor destroyed that which was given through Moses, as it were by the opposition of contraries, but rather so commended all the things mentioned from the law of the Hebrews that whatever he spoke besides, from his own person, availed either toward seeking the exposition, if that law had set anything down obscurely, or toward more safely preserving what that law had willed: you see how differently must be understood what he says, that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it—namely, that it was not made whole by these words as though half-full, but that what, with the letter commanding, could not be done on account of the presumption of the proud, might, with grace persuading, be fulfilled on account of the confession of the humble, by the work of deeds, not by the addition of words. For faith, as the Apostle says, works through love (Gal 5:6). Whence likewise he says: For he who loves another has fulfilled the Law (Rom 13:8). This love, because Christ, coming, bestowed it in manifestation through the Holy Spirit whom he sent as promised—by which love alone the righteousness of the Law could be fulfilled—he therefore said: I came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. This is the New Testament, by which to this love the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven is promised, which was veiled in the figures of the Old Testament according to the distribution of the times. Whence he says: A new commandment I give you, that you love one another (Jn 13:34).

28. And so all, or nearly all, the things he admonished or commanded, where he added But I say to you, are found also in those ancient books. There it is said against anger: My eye is troubled because of anger (Ps 6:8 (6:7)); and, Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city (Prov 16:32). There against a hard word: The stroke of a whip makes a bruise, but the stroke of the tongue breaks the bones (Sir 28:17). There against adultery of the heart: You shall not covet your neighbor's wife (Exod 20:17). For it does not say, "You shall not commit adultery," but, "You shall not covet." Whence the Apostle recalls this from the Law, saying: For I would not have known covetousness, unless the Law had said: You shall not covet (Rom 7:7). There, concerning the patience of not resisting, the man is praised who offers his cheek to the one striking him and is filled with reproaches (See Lam 3:30). There, concerning loving an enemy, it is said: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink (Prov 25:21). For from here the Apostle recalled this (See Rom 12:20). And that saying in the Psalm: With those who hated peace I was peaceable (Ps 120:7 (119:7)); and many other things. And that we imitate God by tempering ourselves from vengeance and by loving even the wicked, you have there a copious passage about God himself doing this; for there it is written: For your great might is always at hand for you alone, and who will stand against the strength of your arm? For the whole world before you is like a grain that tips the scales, and like a drop of morning dew that comes down upon the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things, and you overlook the sins of men for the sake of repentance. For you love all things that are, and hate none of the things you have made; for you would not have established anything if you hated it. How could anything endure, if you had not willed it; or what had not been called by you, be preserved? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord, who love souls. For your good spirit is in all things; on account of which you rebuke little by little those who go astray, and admonishing them about the things wherein they sin, you address them, that, leaving wickedness, they may believe in you, O Lord (Wis 11:21–22; 12:1–2). To this kindly patience of God, who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad and rains upon the just and the unjust, Christ exhorts us to imitate it: that we should neglect to avenge our injuries, and do good to those who hate us, that we may be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect (See Mt 5:44–48). And that it avails us also toward the remitting of the debts of our sins, that we relax to others these debts of vengeance, and that we must beware lest, if we do not do this, the obligation of sin not be remitted to us either, though we entreat—thus it is written in those ancient books: He who wishes to be avenged will find vengeance from the Lord, and he will surely establish his sins. Forgive your neighbor who has harmed you, and then, when you pray, your sins will be loosed. Does a man harbor anger against a man, and seek healing from the Lord? He has no mercy on a man like himself, and does he entreat the Lord for his own sins? He himself, being but flesh, harbors anger, and seeks propitiation from the Lord? And who will obtain pardon for his sins? (Sir 28:1–5)

29. Now concerning a wife not to be put away, what else, or what more apt, should I recall from those books, than that by which the Lord himself answered the Jews when they questioned him about this matter? For when they asked whether it was lawful to put away a wife for any cause whatever, he said to them: Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said: For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife; and the two shall be one flesh. And so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What, then, God has joined together, let not man separate. Behold, the Jews are convicted from the books of Moses that a wife is not to be put away—they who supposed they were acting according to the will of the law of Moses when they put her away. At the same time we here recognize too, with Christ himself bearing witness, that God made and joined male and female—which the Manicheans, by denying, condemn, now resisting not the book of Moses but the Gospel of Christ. Moreover, if what they themselves suppose and preach is true, that the devil made and joined male and female, by what diabolical cunning does Faustus rebuke Moses as one dissolving marriages by a writ of divorce, and praise Christ as one confirming that bond of this kind by the precept of the Gospel—when surely, according to his own foolish and sacrilegious opinion, he ought to praise Moses for separating what the devil had made and joined, and to find fault with Christ for solidifying the devil's contrivance and bond? Now, how the good Master opens up that other point—why Moses himself, from whose book was brought forth, concerning the first joining of male and female, conjugal chastity so holy and to be violated by no separation, afterward permitted a wife to be put away? For when they had answered him: Why, then, did Moses command to give a writ of divorce and put away? he said to them: Because of the hardness of your heart Moses permitted you to put away your wives (Mt 19:4–8). This is what we expounded a little before (See Deut 24:1–4). For how great was the hardness that could not, even by the interposition of a document—where the place for dissuasion was granted to the just and prudent—be loosed and bent to receive or recall the love of marriage? Thus the Lord declared, by the testimony of the same Law, what the Law both commanded to the good and permitted to the hard: when he both admonished, from the joining of male and female recalled from that same Scripture, that a wife is not to be put away, and expounded the divine authority of that joining, and showed that the writ of divorce is to be given on account of the hardness of a heart, whether to be tamed or untamable.

30. Wherefore, since all those excellent precepts of the Lord, which Faustus wished to show contrary to the ancient books of the Hebrews, are found in those same books as well, for what did the Lord come—not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it—except that, the figures of things promised being excepted (which, with the truth rendered, have been fulfilled and removed), the precepts themselves, by which that Law is holy and just and good (See Rom 7:12), should be fulfilled in us, not through the oldness of the letter that commands, and that increases the offenses of the proud by the guilt even of transgression, but through the newness of the spirit that assists, and that frees the confession of the humble by the grace of salvation? For in truth, just as all these sublime precepts are not lacking even in those ancient books, so there the end to which they are referred is hidden; although according to that end the saints lived, who saw its future revelation, and, according to the property of the times, either prophetically veiled it, or wisely understood it as prophetically veiled.

31. Finally—and I would not say this rashly—I do not know whether anyone has found in those books the name "kingdom of heaven," which the Lord names so often. It is indeed said there: Love wisdom, that you may reign forever (Wis 6:21 (6:22)). And eternal life itself, if it were not there preached openly, the Lord would not say even to the wicked Jews: Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life; they bear witness about me (Jn 5:39). For to what else does it pertain that it is written there: I shall not die, but live, and recount the works of the Lord (Ps 118:17 (117:17)); and, Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death (Ps 13:4 (12:4)); and, The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them—and a little after: But they are in peace; and though before men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and being chastised in few things, in many they will be well disposed (Wis 3:1–5); and in another place: But the just will live forever, and their reward is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the Most High; therefore they will receive the kingdom of glory and the crown of beauty from the hand of the Lord (Wis 5:15–17 (5:16–18))? These and many other testimonies of eternal life, whether most open or somewhat obscure, are found there.

And concerning the resurrection of bodies itself the Prophets were not silent. Whence the Pharisees most fiercely contended against the Sadducees, who did not believe it; which appears evidently not only in the canonical Acts of the Apostles—which these people do not accept, lest they be convicted concerning the coming of the true Paraclete whom the Lord promised (See Acts 23:6–9)—but also in the Gospel, where the Sadducees set before him the question about the woman who had married seven brothers one by one, since each in turn succeeded the other dying in marriage to her, as to whose wife of them she would be in the resurrection (See Mt 22:23–28).

Accordingly, that Scripture abounds in testimonies of eternal life and of the resurrection of the dead; but this name—that is, "kingdom of heaven"—occurs to me from no passage there; for this pertains properly to the revelation of the New Testament, because those bodies which had been earthly will, by that change which Paul mentions more openly, become spiritual in the resurrection (See 1 Cor 15:42–44), and on this account heavenly, in which we may possess the kingdom of heaven. Which was reserved also to be named by the mouth of him whom that whole apparatus of the old Instrument was bringing to birth—as one to come, a king to rule and a priest to sanctify his faithful—in generations, deeds, words, sacrifices, observances, festivities, and in all the proclamations of its discourses, and in deeds done, and in figures of things: who, full of grace and truth (See Jn 1:14), both to do the precepts by assisting through grace, and to fulfill the promises by caring through truth, came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.

1. FAUSTUS said: Why do you worship the sun, unless because you are pagans and a schism of the gentiles, not a sect? Therefore it will not be beside the point to inquire into this very thing too, so that we may see more clearly which of us ought to be called by this name. And indeed, if I now report my faith to you simply, as among friends, I may perhaps seem to feign it for the sake of an excuse, or to blush, far be it, at the worship of the divine luminaries. But take it however you wish: I, at any rate, will not regret having spoken—if only for the sake of some who henceforth will know that our religion has nothing in common with the gentiles.

2. We, then, worship the one and the same divinity of God the Father almighty, and of Christ his Son, and of the Holy Spirit, under a threefold appellation: but the Father himself we believe to inhabit the highest and principal light, which Paul elsewhere calls inaccessible (See 1 Tim 6:16); the Son to dwell in this second and visible light; who, since he too is twofold—as the Apostle knew him, calling Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God (See 1 Cor 1:24)—his power, indeed, we believe to dwell in the sun, but his wisdom in the moon. And of the Holy Spirit, who is the third majesty, we confess this whole compass of air to be the seat and lodging; from whose forces and spiritual outpouring the earth too, conceiving, brings forth a passible Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men, suspended from every tree. Wherefore both we, with respect to the universe, and you likewise, with respect to the bread and the cup, have an equal religion, although you most fiercely hate its authors. This is our faith: about which, if you think it should be inquired of elsewhere, you shall hear; though even this is no less firm an argument for the present, that either you, or anyone else, when asked where he believes his God to dwell, will not hesitate to answer: In the light—from which this worship of mine is confirmed by the testimony of almost all.

3. But now to that point, that you called us not a sect but a schism of the gentiles. A schism, unless I am mistaken, is for one who holds the same opinions and worships with the same rite as the rest to take pleasure only in a separation of the assembly. But a sect is for one who holds far other opinions than the rest, and has instituted for himself a worship of the divinity by another and far dissimilar rite. If these things are so, my opinion and worship, at any rate, are far other than the pagans'. About yours we shall see later. The pagans dogmatize that good and evil things, foul and splendid, perpetual and perishable, changeable and certain, corporeal and divine, have one principle. I think things very contrary to these, who confess God to be the principle of all good things, but Hyle of the contrary ones; for so does our theologian name the principle and nature of evil. Likewise the pagans think God is to be worshiped with altars, shrines, images, victims, and incense. From these I walk far different in this too, who think that I myself, if only I am worthy, am the rational temple of God; I receive Christ his Son as the living image of the living majesty; I set up as an altar a mind imbued with good arts and disciplines; I place divine honors too and sacrifices in prayers alone, and those pure and simple: how, then, am I a schism of the pagans?

4. For so far you could call me a schism of the Jews too, because I worship the almighty God, which every Jew boldly claims for himself, while you did not consider the diversity of rites by which the Almighty is worshiped by me and by the Jews—if indeed the Jews do worship the Almighty. But for the present we are treating of opinion, which has so deceived the pagans about the worship of the sun, as it has the Jews about the Almighty. But not even if you called me a schism of yours would it be true, although I venerate and worship Christ: because I worship him by another rite and another faith than you. For a schism ought either to change nothing from that whence it was made, or not much: as for instance you, who, falling away from the gentiles, first tore away with you the opinion of monarchy—that is, that you believe all things to be from God; but you turned their sacrifices into love-feasts, their idols into martyrs, whom you worship with like vows; you appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the solemn days of the gentiles together with them, such as the kalends and solstices; of your life, certainly, you have changed nothing; you are indeed a schism, having nothing different from its mother but the assembly. And likewise your predecessors the Jews, themselves too separated from the gentiles, abandoned only the graven images; but the temples, and immolations, and altars, and priesthoods, and all the ministry of holy things they practiced by the same rite, and much more superstitiously than the gentiles. And concerning the opinion of monarchy they too dissent in nothing from the pagans: wherefore it is established that you and the Jews are schisms of gentilism; whose faith and rites you hold, somewhat though slightly changed, and yet from the mere division of assemblies you suppose yourselves to be sects. But further, if you ask for sects, there will be no more than two—that is, the gentiles' and ours, who hold far different opinions from them. So opposed are we to each other, indeed, as is truth to falsehood, as day to night, as want to plenty, as disease to health. But you are neither a sect of error nor of truth, but only a schism; and not even that of truth at least, but of error.

5. AUGUSTINE replied: O ignorant plague, and shifty vanity! Why do you object to yourself what, if anyone objects it to you, he does not know with whom he is dealing? For we do not call you pagans, or a schism of the pagans, but say that you have a certain likeness to them, in that you worship many gods. But that you are far worse than they, because they worship things that exist, but that are not to be worshiped as gods; for idols do exist, but for salvation they are nothing. And he who worships a tree—not, indeed, by plowing, but by adoring—worships not what is nowhere, but what is not thus to be worshiped. The very demons too, of whom the Apostle says, What the gentiles immolate, they immolate to demons and not to God (1 Cor 10:20), surely exist—those to whom he says they immolate, and whose associates he does not wish us to be. And further, heaven and earth, sea and air, sun and moon, and the other stars—all these appear manifest to the eyes, and are present to the senses themselves. When the pagans worship these as gods, or as parts of one great god—for some of them suppose the whole universe to be the greatest god—they worship things that exist. When we deal with them, that they may not worship these, we do not say to them that these are nothing, but that they are not to be worshiped; and we persuade them to worship the invisible God, the maker of all these, by participation in whom alone a man can become blessed—which all wish, no one doubts. But since some of them worship an invisible and incorporeal creature, such as the human soul and mind, yet because a man is not made blessed by participation in a creature of this kind either, that God who is not only invisible but also immutable—that is, the true God—is to be worshiped: because he alone is to be worshiped, by enjoying whom alone the worshiper becomes blessed; and by not enjoying whom alone every mind is wretched, however much it enjoys any other thing. But since you worship things that do not exist at all, but are fashioned by the vanity of your deceitful fables, you would be nearer to true piety and religion if you were at least pagans, or in the class of those who worship corporeal things—not, indeed, things to be worshiped, but yet things that are true. Whence I would say more truly that you do not even worship this sun, around whose circuit your prayer turns.

6. For even about it you boast things so false and so detestable that, if it avenged its own injuries, you would already be burning alive in its flames. For first you say it is a kind of ship: thus you not only err, as the saying goes, by the whole heaven, but even swim by it. Then, although it shines forth round to the eyes of all, and that shape is perfect for it according to the position of its order, you declare it triangular—that is, that this light radiates upon the world and the lands through a kind of triangular window of heaven. So it comes about that you turn your back and neck to this sun indeed, but adore not the sun itself, conspicuous in such clear roundness, but some ship or other, glittering and shining through a triangular opening, which you imagine fabricated. Which assuredly that craftsman would not make, if, as the timbers are bought from which the planks of ships are joined together, so too were bought the words from which the fables of heretics are fabricated. But these things are more tolerably either laughed at or wept over in you. That is intolerably wicked, that you say beautiful girls and boys are displayed from that very ship, with whose most shapely bodies the princes of darkness burn—males toward the females, and females toward the males—so that, in that flaming lust and gaping concupiscence, from their members, as from foul and squalid fetters, the members of your god may be loosed. And to these most obscene rags of yours you try to stitch the ineffable Trinity, saying that the Father dwells in a certain secret light; that the Son's power is in the sun, his wisdom in the moon; but the Holy Spirit in the air!

7. In this threefold—or rather now fourfold—fable of yours, concerning the Father's secret light, what shall I say to you, except that you cannot conceive of light except such as you are accustomed to see? For gazing on this light, conspicuous and most familiar to all flesh—not only of men, but even of beasts and little worms—you are accustomed to enlarge beyond measure the phantasm conceived in your heart from it, and to call that the light where God the Father dwells with the dwellers in his realm. For when have you distinguished the light by which we see from that light by which we understand—since you have never thought that to understand the truth is anything else than to imagine corporeal forms, whether finite or in some parts infinite, which you do not know to be empty phantasms? Accordingly, since there is so great a difference between the thought by which I think of your land of light, which is nowhere at all, and the thought by which I think of Alexandria, which I have never seen, but which nonetheless exists; and again, so great a difference between this by which I think of unknown Alexandria, and that by which I think of known Carthage: from this thought too, by which I think of certain and known bodies, the thought is far and incomparably distant by which I understand justice, chastity, faith, truth, love, goodness, and whatever is of this kind—which thought, tell me, if you can, what light it is, by which all those things which are not this body are both distinguished among themselves, and known by a faithful manifestation how far they are distant from this body; and yet even this light is not that light which God is. For this is a creature, that is the Creator; this is made, that is he who made it; this, finally, is changeable, while it wills what it did not will, and knows what it did not know, and remembers what it had forgotten; but that persists with an immutable will, truth, and eternity. And from it comes to us the beginning of existing, the reason of knowing, the law of loving; from it, to all irrational living things too, the nature by which they live, the vigor by which they perceive, the motion by which they seek; from it, to all bodies too, measure that they may subsist, number that they may be adorned, weight that they may be ordered. And so that light, the inseparable Trinity, is the one God, whom you, with no body added, divide even by places—a substance incorporeal, spiritual, and immutable in itself. Nor even do you give three places to the Trinity, but four: to the Father one, that is, the inaccessible light, which you utterly do not understand; to the Son two, namely the sun and the moon; to the Holy Spirit again one, that is, this whole compass of air. Concerning the Father's inaccessible light, then—because from it the Son and the Holy Spirit are not separated for those who hold the true faith—let this much be said for the present.

8. But why has it pleased your vanity to place the power of the Son in the sun and his wisdom in the moon? For since the Son remains inseparable in the Father himself, how can his wisdom be separated from his power, so that the one is in the sun, the other in the moon—when by places of this kind nothing can be divided and separated except bodies? Had you known this, you would never have woven such great fables with a foolish and insane phantasm. But in that very falsity and deceit, how incongruously, how perversely do you say that the seat of wisdom shines less than the seat of power—when it seems to pertain to power to work and effect, but to wisdom to teach and show; and on this account, if heat predominated in the sun, but light in the moon, in some way these figments would have found a fog of verisimilitude for deceiving carnal and animal men, who think nothing exists except what they have imagined corporeal; for the violent operation of heat is for moving, whence it would be attributed to power; but the clear brightness of light is for demonstrating, whence they would give it to wisdom—but since light far excels in the sun, how is power there, while what shines so much less is here wisdom? O sacrilegious folly! And since Christ is one, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), but the Holy Spirit is not himself Christ; how is Christ separated from himself, when the Holy Spirit is not separated from him? For the air, which your fable assigns as the seat of the Holy Spirit, you declare to fill the whole fabric of the world. Whence the sun and moon, performing their circuits, are always with it. But the moon recedes from the sun, and again approaches the sun: so, on your authorship—or rather your deceiving—through half the part of the circle wisdom recedes from power, and again through the other half approaches it; and when it is full, then wisdom is far from power; for then these two luminaries are disjoined from each other by so long an interval that, when the sun inclines to the west, then the moon rises from the east: whence it comes about that, since all things that are deserted by power are weakened, wisdom is the more feeble the fuller the moon is. But if, as the truth holds, the wisdom of God is always equally strong, and the power of God is always equally wise, why do you so speak of these two as to separate them by seats and intervals of places, when you say that the seats themselves are of the same substance—you men who, with a blind and insane mind, do not depart from the phantasm of bodies, and are so lacking in power and wisdom that you can neither be wise in anything strongly, nor strong wisely? Is it really so, you detestable and anathematizable folly, that Christ is stretched out through the sun and moon, dwelling here by power, there by wisdom; perfect and full neither here, neither wise in the sun nor mighty in the moon, and in both places suborns beautiful boys to be coveted by the female princes of darkness, and girls by the males? These things you read, these you believe, these you teach; by this faith and doctrine you live; and you wonder that you are thus abominated!

9. But if in these so eminent and well-known luminaries you so err as to adore in them not what they are, but what you most insanely imagine for yourselves, what shall I say about the rest of your fables? For who is the Splenditenens who suspends the world, and what Atlas supports it with him? These and innumerable things, which you likewise rave about, do not exist at all, and you worship them. Hence we say you are worse than the pagans, like them only in this, that you worship many gods; but unlike them on the worse side, in that they worship as gods things that exist, but are not gods, while you worship things that are neither gods nor anything at all, since they utterly do not exist. They too, indeed, have certain fabulous figments, but they know those to be fables; and either they assert that they were invented by the poets for the sake of pleasure, or they try to interpret them with respect to the nature of things or the morals of men: as Vulcan lame, because the motion of earthly fire is of this kind; and Fortune blind, because the things called fortuitous happen by chance; and the three Fates, with distaff and spindle and fingers twisting a thread from wool, on account of the three times—the past, which is already spun and wound on the spindle; the present, which is passed between the fingers of the spinner; the future in the wool, which is wrapped on the distaff, which has still to be passed through the fingers of the spinner to the spindle, as through the present to the past; and Venus the wife of Vulcan, because pleasure is naturally born from heat, and the adulteress of Mars, because it is unsuited to those waging war; and Cupid a flying and shooting boy, because irrational and unstable love wounds the hearts of the wretched; and very many others in this manner. Wherefore in them we laugh at this, that they so adore, when interpreted, things which, not understood, they would adore—though damnably, yet more excusably. For by their very interpretations they are convicted that they worship not that God by participation in whom alone the mind becomes blessed, but a creature established by him; nor only the powers of the creature itself, like Minerva—whose fable, that she was born from the head of Jove, they interpret with respect to the prudence of counsels, which is proper to reason, to which Plato too gave the seat of the head—but even vices, as we said of Cupid. Whence one of their tragedians says:

has feigned (Seneca, Hippolytus, act 1, scene 2, lines 195–96).

For the Romans even consecrated images of bodily vices, such as those of Pallor and Fever. So, to pass over the fact that the worshipers of images have an affection toward the very figures of bodies, so that they fear those very forms—exalted in places of honor, to which they see such great obeisance shown—as gods; those very interpretations, by which these mute and deaf and blind and lifeless things are defended, are more justly accused. Nevertheless, even these things, in whatever way, do exist—although, as I have already said, for salvation or any usefulness they are nothing—and the things interpreted from them are found in reality. But you—the first man warring with the five elements; and the powerful spirit fabricating the world from the captive bodies of the nation of darkness, or rather from the conquered and subjected members of your god; and the Splenditenens, holding the relics of those same members of your god in his hand, and bewailing all the rest, captured, oppressed, defiled; and the greatest Atlas, bearing with him beneath his shoulders, lest the former, wearied, cast the whole away, and so your fable, as it were upon a theatrical tapestry, fail to reach the final winding-up of that last globe—and innumerable other things equally inept and insane: these you demonstrate neither by painting or sculpting, nor by interpreting; and them, though they are nothing at all, you believe and worship; and besides, you insult, as rashly credulous, Christians who cleanse devout minds by faith unfeigned. For—not to seek many things by which it might be shown that these do not exist at all, since to treat more subtly and loftily of the world's fabric, though it would not be difficult for me, is certainly far too long—this I say: if these things are true, the substance of God is changeable, corruptible, defilable. But to believe this is full of sacrilegious madness. All those things, therefore, are vain, are false, are nothing. Accordingly, you are utterly worse than those pagans who are commonly known, and existed of old, and now in their remnants already blush: because they worship things that are not gods, but you things that utterly do not exist.

10. And so, if you suppose that you therefore hold the truth because you are far dissimilar to the error of the pagans, while we are therefore in error because we perhaps stand further from you than from the pagans: let a dead man too be called healthy because he is no longer even sick; and let one who is healthy be reproached because he is nearer to a sick man than to a dead one. Or, if very many pagans are to be reckoned not as sick but as dead, let the shapeless ash in the tomb be praised, because it no longer even keeps the form of a corpse; and let living members be blamed, because they are more like a corpse than like ash. So these people too suppose that we are to be blamed, because they say we are more like the funeral of the pagans than like the ash of the Manicheans. And yet, through many differences, each thing is wont to be divided one way and another for the sake of distinguishing, so that what was on this side is, through other differences, found on the other side, where it was not before. As, for example, if someone divides all flesh into birds and those that cannot fly, by this difference four-footed creatures are more like men than birds; for equally they cannot fly. Again, if someone divides by another difference, so as to say that some are rational, others irrational, now four-footed creatures are more like birds than men; for equally they are devoid of reason. Not thinking of this, Faustus says: "But further, if you ask for sects, there will be no more than two, that is, the gentiles' and ours, who hold far different opinions from them." Namely, because he had said that the gentiles differ most from the Manicheans in this, that they say all things are from one principle, which the Manicheans deny, adding the principle of the nation of darkness. In this difference, it must be confessed, very many pagans agree with us; but he did not see that likewise, if someone so divides as to say that, of those who are held by some religion, it pleases some to worship one God, others many: by this difference both the pagans are removed from us, and these people are reckoned with the pagans, while we are reckoned with the Jews. Someone, then, can according to this difference suppose, in this way too, that there are only two sects. Here perhaps you may say that you declare your many gods to be of one substance—as though the pagans do not assert their many to be of one, although they attribute to them diverse duties and works and powers: just as among you too, one conquers the nation of darkness, another fabricates the world from it once captured; one suspends it from above, another carries it beneath; one turns the wheels of fires, winds, and waters in the depths, another, going around in the heavens, gathers even from the sewers the members of your god with his rays. And who could count all the fabulous duties of your gods, manifested by no truth, figured by no riddles? Further, if someone so divides all men as to say that some are those who believe God cares for human affairs, others who do not believe this at all: on this side both the pagans agree with us, and the Jews, and you, and all heretics who are in any way called Christians; but on that side are found the Epicureans, and any others who have thought so. Is this a small difference? Why, then, should not according to this too only two sects be said to exist, so that in one of them you are with us? Or will you dare, in this difference, to depart from us, who preach that God cares for human affairs, and to be with the Epicureans, who deny this? Here surely, repudiating them, you run to us. Thus, through one difference and another, now here, now there, men are found joined on one side, disjoined on another—all by turns with us, and we with all, and again none of them with us, nor we with any of them. And if Faustus considered this, he would not rave so eloquently.

11. But what shall I say to this, that he says: "From the forces of the Holy Spirit and his spiritual outpouring the earth too, conceiving, brings forth a passible Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men, suspended from every tree"? O madman—not, for the moment, to discuss your empty talk on this matter of yours—can the earth conceive a passible Jesus from the Holy Spirit, and could the virgin Mary not? Compare, if you dare, virginal entrails sanctified by such great chastity with all the places of the earth where trees and herbs are born. Do you so shudder, in that woman, or pretend to shudder, at a womb dedicated to modesty, and not shudder that Jesus is born in all the gardens around the various cities from the waters of the sewers? For what muck, however filthy, does not produce and nourish innumerable shoots? Thus you preach that a passible Jesus is born, whom you cry out it is unworthy to believe born of a virgin. If you think the flesh unclean, why does it not seem to you more unclean, what the very nature of the flesh purges out from the tempering of its own health? Or is the flesh unclean, and the dung that is voided from the flesh clean? Do you not attend, do you not see, that fields rejoice in dung, by which they may be more fruitfully made fertile? Surely your madness comes to this, that from the Holy Spirit, whom you say disdained the flesh of Mary, the earth conceives the more abundantly and joyfully the more diligently it has been fattened with the filth and squalor of flesh. Or, to defend this, will you say that the Holy Spirit prevails everywhere by an incontaminable presence? You are answered: Why, then, not in the virginal womb too? But, to be silent now about the conception, look next at the birth itself. You say the earth, conceiving from the Holy Spirit, brings forth a passible Jesus, whom yet you declare to hang, thus contaminated, from every tree in fruits and crops, so that he is the more contaminated by innumerable animals feeding on the flesh of animals, to be purified only from that one part which your hunger has succored. And so we believe in our heart, and confess with our mouth, that Christ, the Son of God, the Word of God, was clothed with flesh incontaminably; because that substance, which can be defiled by nothing, cannot be defiled even by flesh: but you, according to your fable, say that Jesus, still hanging on the tree, is already contaminated before he enters the flesh of anyone feeding; or, if he is not contaminated, how do you purify him by eating? Then, since you say all trees are his cross, whence Faustus preaches him "suspended from every tree," why do you not, just as that Joseph of Arimathea, doing a good work, took that true Jesus down from the cross to bury him (See Jn 19:38), so too pluck the fruits, that you may bury in your belly Jesus taken down from his suspension on the tree? Or how is it pious to lay Christ in a tomb, but impious to take him down from the tree? Or, that what the Apostle sets down from the prophet may suit you too: Their throat is an open tomb (Ps 5:10 (5:11); Rom 3:13)—do you, with mouth open, await who may bring Christ, as to a most excellent burial, into your jaws? Finally, tell us how many Christs you say there are. Is the one whom the earth, conceiving from the Holy Spirit, brings forth passible—suspended not only from every tree, but even lying in the grass—a different one from him whom the Jews crucified under Pontius Pilate; and a third, that one stretched out through the sun and moon? Or one and the same, in some part of himself bound in the trees, but in some part free, succoring that same bound and captive part? But if it is so, that one whom you concede suffered under Pontius Pilate—since you relate that he was without flesh—I do not yet say how he could undergo such a death without flesh; but I ask to whom he left those ships, in order, descending thence, to suffer such things as could not happen without some body. For according to a spiritual presence he could in no way suffer those things; but according to a corporeal presence he could not be at once in the sun, and in the moon, and on the cross. Accordingly, if he had no body, he was not crucified; but if he had one, I ask whence he had it, since you say all bodies are from the nation of darkness, although you have never been able to conceive of the divine substance except as corporeal. Whence you are forced either to say he was crucified without a body—than which nothing more absurd and insane can be said; or that he was seen to be crucified in phantom rather than in truth—and by this impiety again what is worse?; or that not all bodies are from the nation of darkness, but that there is also a body of the divine substance, which yet is not immortal, but can be fastened to wood and slain—which is no less full of madness; or that Christ had a mortal body from the nation of darkness, and thus, you who fear to believe the virgin Mary the mother of that body, do not fear the nation of demons. Finally, since, according to Faustus's opinion—which indeed he touched, with as much brevity as he could, plucked from that most lengthy fable of yours: "The earth, conceiving from the Holy Spirit, brings forth a passible Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men, suspended from every tree"—why does that Savior fit the one who hangs by hanging, and not fit the one who is born by being born? But if you therefore say there is a Jesus in the trees, and a Jesus crucified under Pontius Pilate, and a Jesus stretched out through the sun and moon, because all this is from one and the same substance, why do you not include the rest of the thousands of your divinities under this appellation? For why should not the Splenditenens too be Jesus, and that Atlas, and that king of honor, and that powerful spirit, and that first man, and whatever else, innumerably, you preach under diverse names and diverse duties?

12. Finally, why is the Holy Spirit himself set in the third person, when he is among innumerable ones? Or why is he too not Jesus? And what does the deceitful web of words mean in Faustus's writings, where, trying as it were to agree with true Christians, from whom he is far and altogether shut off, he says: "We, then, worship the one and the same divinity of God the Father almighty, and of Christ his Son, and of the Holy Spirit, under a threefold appellation"? For why under a threefold, and not rather under a manifold—not appellation only, but also reality, if there are as many persons as names? For it is not as in weapons, where one thing is under a threefold appellation—"blade," "point," "sword"—just as you call one thing "moon" and "lesser ship" and "luminary of the night," and whatever other term you assign to the same thing; in this way you can call the same one "first man" whom you call "powerful spirit," whom "Splenditenens," whom "greatest Atlas." But that one is one, and this and that are another and another, and you are not accustomed to call any of these Christ. Or how is there one divinity, if there are diverse works? Or why is not the whole at once one Christ, if on account of one substance there is Christ in the trees, and Christ in the persecution of the Jews, and Christ in the sun and moon? Surely your phantasms have lost all their ways; surely they are nothing else than the visions of madmen.

13. But why Faustus should think that our religion concerning the bread and the cup is equal to his, I do not know, since for the Manicheans to taste wine is not religion but sacrilege. For in the grape they recognize their god, in the cask they refuse to, as if its being trodden and shut in had offended them in some way. But our bread and cup—not just any (as if on account of Christ bound in the ears of grain and in the vine-shoots, as those people dote), but made mystical for us by a definite consecration—becomes so for us; it is not so born. Accordingly, what is not so made, although it is bread and cup, is the nourishment of refreshment, not the sacrament of religion: except that we bless and give thanks to the Lord in every gift of his, not only spiritual but also corporeal. But to you, through your fable, Christ is set before you bound in all foods, still to be bound in your entrails, and to be loosed by your belchings. For both when you eat, you refresh yourselves by the defect of your god; and when you digest, you defect by his refreshment. For when he renders you full, your taking-in presses him. This would indeed be reckoned to mercy—when he suffers something for you in you—were it not that he again leaves you empty, that, freed from you, he might escape. How, then, do you compare our bread and cup, and call equal a religion an error far separated from the truth—you who dote worse than some who suppose that, on account of the bread and cup, we worship Ceres and Liber? This I thought worth mentioning, that you may notice from what vanity comes that other notion of yours, that on account of the Sabbath our fathers were dedicated to Saturn. For just as we are far from Ceres and Liber, the gods of the pagans, although we embrace by our rite the sacrament of the bread and cup, which you praised so as to wish to be our equals in it; so our fathers were far from the chains of Saturn, although, for the prophetic season, they observed the rest of the Sabbath.

14. But why did you not say that you too have a religion equal to the pagans on account of Hyle, which is frequently mentioned in some books of the pagans? Nay rather, on this account you wished it to be understood as unequal and far dissimilar, because by this name your theologian names the principle and nature of evil. In which, indeed, your great ignorance is caught out: because you neither know what Hyle is, and yet you affect to be puffed up, as though learned, by this term for a thing of which you are utterly ignorant. For the Greeks, when they discuss nature, define Hyle as a certain matter of things, in no way at all formed, but capable of all corporeal forms; which indeed is in some way known in the mutability of bodies, for in itself it can neither be perceived nor understood. But in this certain of the gentiles err, that they join it as coeternal to God, so that it is not from him, although it is formed by him: which is foreign to the truth, as truth itself teaches. Behold, nonetheless, with what pagans you are found to be quite alike concerning this very Hyle, in that you too declare that it has its own principle, and is not from God; and in this you said you were unalike, not knowing what you say. But in that there is no proper form to this Hyle, and it cannot be formed except by God, they agree with our truth, but dissent from your falsehood; for you, not knowing what Hyle is—that is, what the matter of things is—call it the nation of darkness, where you establish not only innumerable corporeal forms distinct in five kinds, but even a mind that forms these bodies; and—what is more ignorant, or rather more insane—you say that the mind itself is Hyle rather than the bodies, the mind which you declare not to be formed but to form. For if there were there a certain mind that forms, and corporeal elements that are formed, those elements would have to be called Hyle—that is, the matter which that same mind formed, which mind you wish to be the principle of evil. If you said this, you would not indeed greatly err concerning what Hyle is—except that the elements themselves too, although to be formed into other forms, yet because they would already be elements and distinguished by their proper appearances, would not be Hyle, since that is utterly formless; nevertheless your ignorance would be tolerable, because you would call Hyle that which is formed, not that which forms. But even so you would still be held vain and sacrilegious, because, not knowing that all measure of natures and number of forms and order of weights cannot exist except from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you would attribute so great a good to the principle of evil. But as it is, since you are ignorant both of what Hyle is and of what evil is—oh, if I could persuade you to restrain yourselves from seducing the more ignorant!

15. Now as for the fact that you wish to be better than the pagans even in this, that they think God is to be worshiped with altars, shrines, images, victims, and incense, while you do none of these things—who would not laugh? As if it were not better to set up an altar even to a stone, which in some way exists, and to offer a victim, than to adore in the delirium of a phantasm that which utterly does not exist. But you, who said you are the rational temple of God, how will you explain this? Does it please you that God should have a temple, some part of which the devil has fabricated? Or are you not the ones who say that all your members and your whole body were fabricated by the malignant mind which you call Hyle, and that a part of that same fabricatrix dwells there together with a part of your god? Since this is held there, as you declare, chained and shut up, ought you to call yourself the temple of God, or the prison of God? Unless perhaps you call your soul the temple of God, which you have from the land of light. But that you are accustomed to call a part of God, or a member of God, not the temple of God. It remains, then, that you have called yourself the temple of God only with respect to the body, which according to you the devil fabricated. Behold how you blaspheme the temple of God, so as to say it is not only not holy, but even a contrivance of the devil and a workhouse of God. But the Apostle: For the temple of God is holy, he says, which you are (1 Cor 3:17); and lest you suppose that what was said pertains only to the soul, hear it more expressly: Do you not know, he says, that your bodies are the temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God? (1 Cor 6:19) But you call the fabric of demons the temple of God, and there you place, as Faustus says, "the living image of the living majesty, Christ the Son of God." Plainly let your phantom Christ dwell in such a temple of sacrilegious vanity. For he can be called an image not from likeness but from feigning.

16. So you have made your mind an altar too—but see of whom. For it appears from those very arts and disciplines with which you said it was imbued. Those arts and disciplines forbid offering bread to a begging man, so that on your altar you may burn with a sacrifice of cruelty: such an altar the Lord destroys, who recalls from the Law with what odor God is delighted, saying: I desire mercy rather than sacrifice (Hos 6:6). And notice where the Lord recalled this: namely, when he was passing through the grain, and his hungry disciples plucked the ears—which you say is murder, by your discipline, with which you imbued your mind; an altar surely not of God, but of lying demons, by whose doctrines a malignant conscience is branded and cauterized (See 1 Tim 4:2), calling murder what Truth calls innocence. For thus he says to the Jews, where he struck down and destroyed you too as those to come: If you knew what this means, I desire mercy rather than sacrifice, you would never have condemned the innocent (Mt 12:7).

17. But what simple and pure prayers will you be able to have as divine honors and sacrifices, when you hold so unworthy and base opinions about the very nature and substance of the divine, that not only is the true God not propitiated by your sacrifices, but in the sacrifices of the pagans your god is immolated? For you judge that he is bound not only in wood, and in herbs, or in human members, but even in the flesh of cattle, by fetters that contaminate and pollute him. But your very soul—to whom shall it say praise to God, when, crying out that a particle of itself is held captive in the nation of darkness, what else does it do but find fault with God, whom it testifies could not have provided for himself against his enemies in any other way than by so great a corruption and so base a captivity of his own parts? Whence your very prayers to your god could not be religious, but invidious. For what evil did you commit before him, that you should now groan to him in this punishment—him whom you did not desert by sinning of your own will, but to whom you were given over to his enemies, that peace might be procured for his kingdom? And not even as hostages are usually given, to be guarded with honor; nor as a shepherd lays a snare to catch a beast: for he is wont to place his own cattle in that trapping snare, not his own member, and generally so that the beast is caught before the cattle is hurt. But you, members of god, were given over to his enemies, unable to restrain their savagery from your god except by being contaminated by their foulness, having no sin of your own, but wasted by the enemy's poison. Whence you cannot say in your prayers: For the glory of your name, O Lord, free us; and be merciful to our sins for the sake of your name (Ps 79:9 (78:9)); but you say: "Free us by your art, because, that you may now in your kingdom mourn secure, we here are pressed, torn apart, defiled." This voice is accusatory, not deprecatory. Nor can you say what the Master of truth taught: Forgive us our debts, as we too forgive our debtors (Mt 6:12). For who are your debtors, who have sinned against you? If it is the nation of darkness, do you forgive its debts—you who shut it up, uprooted forever, in an eternal prison? But what debts can that god of yours forgive you, when he rather sinned against you, in sending you to these things, than you against him, since you obeyed the one sending? Or if he therefore did not sin, because he did this of necessity, your necessity is greater—since you now lie prostrate in the fight—than his was before you fought. For now you suffer evil commingled, while he was suffering nothing such, though he suffered the necessity of sending you. And so either he rather owes you something that you may forgive him; or, if not even he owes you, much less do you owe him. Where, then, are your sacrifices, your simple and pure prayers, when they are deceitful and impure blasphemies?

18. And yet I want you to tell me whence you call all those things which you praise in yourselves by these names, so that you say "temple," "altar," "sacrifice." For if these true things are not owed to the true God, why are they laudably proclaimed in the true religion? But if a true sacrifice is rightly owed to the true God, whence too they are rightly called divine honors, the other things that are called sacrifices are done in likeness of a certain true sacrifice. Now these are partly imitations of false and deceitful gods—that is, of demons proudly exacting divine honors for themselves from those whom they have deceived, such as are, or were, all the things in the temples and idols of the gentiles; partly proclamations of the one most true sacrifice to come, which had to be offered for the sins of all believers, such as were the precepts given divinely to our ancient fathers, where there was also that mystical anointing by which Christ was prefigured, whence the very name is drawn from the chrism. Accordingly, the true sacrifice, which is owed to the one true God, whose altar Christ alone fulfilled, the demons, imitating it in the victims of cattle, arrogantly demand for themselves. Whence the Apostle says: What the gentiles immolate, they immolate to demons and not to God (1 Cor 10:20)—not blaming what was offered, but because it was offered to them. But the Hebrews, in the victims of cattle which they offered to God, celebrated in many and various ways, as was worthy of so great a matter, a prophecy of the future victim which Christ offered. Whence now Christians, with that same sacrifice accomplished, celebrate its memory by the sacrosanct oblation and participation of the body and blood of Christ. But the Manicheans, not knowing what is to be condemned in the sacrifices of the gentiles, and what is to be understood in the sacrifices of the Hebrews, and what is to be held and observed in the sacrifice of Christians, offer their vanity as a holy rite to the devil who has deceived them, departing from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons in the hypocrisy of liars.

19. Let Faustus, then—or rather those who delight in his writings—learn that we have the opinion of monarchy not from the gentiles; but that the gentiles had not so far fallen to false gods as to lose the opinion of the one true God, from whom is every nature of whatever kind. For their wise men—since, as the Apostle says, the invisible things of God, from the foundation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity, so that they are without excuse—knowing God, did not honor him as God or give thanks; but they became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; for, saying they were wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of serpents (Rom 1:20–23). For these are the images of the gentiles, in interpreting which they have no way out except to the creature which God established; so that in the very interpretation of images, of which the more skilled among them are accustomed to boast and be puffed up, that may happen in them which the same Apostle says a little after: They worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom 1:25). But you, both in that you are unlike them, are vain; and in that you are like them, are worse. For to this end you do not, with them, believe in monarchy, in that they believe what is true—namely, so that you believe the substance of the one God himself to be conquerable and corruptible, which is of impious vanity; but in the worship of many gods, the doctrine of lying demons persuaded them of many idols, you of many phantasms.

20. Nor have we turned their sacrifices into love-feasts; but we have understood that sacrifice which I mentioned a little before, the Lord saying: I desire mercy rather than sacrifice. For our love-feasts feed the poor, whether with crops or with flesh. For a creature of God is fed from a creature of God that is suited to human meals. But because lying demons persuaded you—not for the governing of the flesh, but for the practice of blasphemy—to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who have known the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:3–4)—ungrateful to the Creator, and repaying for his liberal benefits sacrilegious injuries, since very often in the love-feasts flesh too is distributed to the poor, you call the mercy of Christians like the sacrifices of the pagans, to some of whom you are alike in this too. For you hold it a sin for cattle to be killed, because you judge that human souls are reincarnated into them—which is found in the books of certain gentile philosophers, although it is said to have been understood otherwise by later ones. But in this too you err much worse: for they feared, in cattle, to slaughter their neighbor; but you, your god, whose members you judge even the souls of cattle to be.

21. As for the fact that Faustus slanders us on this score too, that we honor the memorials of the martyrs—saying that in this we have turned idols into martyrs—it moves me not so much to answer this slander as to show that Faustus himself, in his zeal for slandering, wished to swerve even from the vanities of Mani himself, and, I know not how, fell incautiously into the vulgar and poetic opinion of the pagans, from whom he desires to seem most estranged. For when he had said that we turned idols into martyrs, "Whom," he says, "you worship with like vows; you appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts." Are there, then, shades of the dead? We never heard this in your discourses, never read it in your writings; rather you are accustomed to contradict such opinions, asserting that the souls of the dead that are evil or less purified either go into reincarnations or into certain heavier punishments; but the good are placed in ships, and, sailing in the heavens, pass from here into that phantasm of the land of light, for which they had perished in fighting: so that no souls are detained about the tombs of their bodies. Whence, then, the shades of the dead? What is their substance? What their place? But in his desire for cursing, Faustus forgot what he was professing; or perhaps, dozing, he dictated of shades while dreaming, and did not wake up when he read his own words. But the Christian people celebrate the memorials of the martyrs with religious solemnity, both to arouse imitation, and that they may be associated with their merits and aided by their prayers: yet so that we set up altars to none of the martyrs, but to the very God of the martyrs, though at the memorials of the martyrs. For which of the bishops, standing at the altar in the places of the holy bodies, ever said, "We offer to you, Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian"? But what is offered is offered to God, who crowned the martyrs, at the memorials of those whom he crowned; so that from the admonition of the places themselves a greater affection may arise, to sharpen love both toward those whom we can imitate, and toward him by whose help we can. We honor the martyrs, then, with that worship of love and fellowship by which in this life too holy men of God are honored, whose heart we perceive to be prepared for such suffering for the evangelical truth. But them so much the more devoutly, as more securely, after the contests have been overcome; with so much the more confident praise, too, as they are now victors in a happier life than while still fighting in this one. But with that worship which in Greek is called latreia, which in Latin cannot be said in one word, since it is a certain service properly owed to the divinity, we neither worship nor teach that anything is to be worshiped except the one God. And since the oblation of sacrifice pertains to this worship, whence is called idolatry that of those who exhibit this even to idols, in no way do we offer, or command to be offered, any such thing, either to any martyr, or to any holy soul, or to any angel: and whoever slips into this error is corrected by sound doctrine, whether that he may be corrected, or that others may beware. For even the holy ones themselves, whether men or angels, do not wish exhibited to themselves what they know to be owed to the one God. This appeared in Paul and Barnabas, when the Lycaonians, stirred by the miracles done through them, wished to immolate to them as to gods: for, tearing their garments, confessing and persuading that they were not gods, they forbade these things to be done to themselves (See Acts 14:7–17). It appeared also in the angels, as we read in the Apocalypse, an angel forbidding himself to be adored and saying to his adorer: I am a fellow servant of you and of your brethren (Rev 19:10; 22:8–9). These things proud spirits plainly exact for themselves, the devil and his angels, as throughout all the temples and sacred rites of the gentiles. Whose likeness was expressed in certain proud men too: as we hold committed to memory concerning certain kings of Babylon. Whence holy Daniel endured accusers and persecutors, because, when the king's edict had been issued that nothing be asked of any god by anyone except the king alone, he was caught adoring and entreating his God—that is, the one and true God (See Dan 6). But those who get drunk at the memorials of the martyrs—how can they be approved by us, when sound doctrine condemns them, even if they do this in their own homes? But it is one thing what we teach, another what we endure, another what we are commanded to enjoin, another what we are commanded to amend, and, until we amend it, are compelled to tolerate. One is the discipline of Christians, another the excess of the drunken, or the error of the weak. Yet even in this very thing the faults of the drunken and of the sacrilegious differ greatly. For it is a sin far less to return drunk from the martyrs than even to sacrifice to the martyrs while fasting. I said "to sacrifice to the martyrs"; I did not say "to sacrifice to God at the memorials of the martyrs," which we do most frequently, in that rite alone by which he commanded sacrifice to be offered to himself in the manifestation of the New Testament; which pertains to that worship called latria, and is owed to the one God. But what shall I do, and when shall I demonstrate to so great a blindness of these heretics what force that has which is sung in the Psalms: The sacrifice of praise will glorify me, and there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God (Ps 50:23 (49:23))? The flesh and blood of this sacrifice, before the coming of Christ, was promised through victims of likenesses; in the passion of Christ it was rendered through the truth itself; after the ascension of Christ it is celebrated through the sacrament of memory: and on this account there is as much difference between the sacrifices of the pagans and of the Hebrews as between an erring imitation and a foretelling prefiguration. But just as the virginity of holy women is not on that account to be despised or detested, because the Vestals too were virgins; so the sacrifices of the fathers are not on that account to be reproached, because there are also sacrifices of the gentiles: for just as among those virginities there is a great difference, although nothing else differs except to whom each is vowed and rendered; so between the sacrifices of the pagans and of the Hebrews there is a great difference, by this very thing, that this alone differs—to whom they are immolated and offered: the former, namely, to the proud impiety of demons arrogating this very thing to themselves for this reason, that they might be held gods, because sacrifice is a divine honor; the latter to the one God, that there might be offered to him a likeness promising the truth of the sacrifice, to whom the rendered truth itself was to be offered in the passion of the body and blood of Christ.

22. For it is not, as Faustus said, that our predecessors the Jews, separated from the gentiles, when they had a temple, and immolations, and altars, and priesthoods, abandoned only the graven images—that is, the idols: for they could, like some, even without graven idols, immolate to trees and mountains, and finally even to the sun and moon and the other stars. And if they did this through that worship which is called latria, serving the creature rather than the Creator, and on this account erring in the no small evil of impious superstition, the demons would nonetheless offer themselves to delude them and to receive from them what they had thus offered. For those proud and impious spirits are fed not by reek and smoke, as some vain men suppose, but by the errors of men—not by the refreshment of their own body, but by malevolent delight when in any way they deceive, or by the arrogant pride of a feigned majesty when they glory that divine honors are exhibited to them. Not, therefore, did those fathers of ours abandon only the images of the gentiles; but immolating nothing to earth, nor to any earthly thing, nor to sea, nor to heaven, nor to the host of heaven, they offered victims to the one God, the creator of all, who willed them to be offered to himself, promising through their likeness the true victim, through which he reconciled us to himself by the remission of sins in Christ Jesus our Lord, whose body the faithful, made his body, Paul addresses, saying: I beseech you, then, brethren, through the mercy of God, that you present your bodies as a living victim, holy, pleasing to God (Rom 12:1). But the Manicheans say that human bodies are the workmanship of the nation of darkness, and the prisons in which the conquered God is shut up: whence Faustus announces one thing, Paul far another. But since whoever preaches to you a gospel besides what you have received, let him be anathema (See Gal 1:9)—Christ speaks truth in Paul; let Mani be anathema in Faustus.

23. He also says that we have changed nothing of the morals of the gentiles, not knowing what he says. For since the just lives by faith, and the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned (1 Tim 1:5), and there remain, for the forming of the life of the faithful, these three—faith, hope, charity (See 1 Cor 13:13)—how can it happen that one has morals equal to another, who does not have these three equal with him? For he who believes one thing, hopes another, loves another, must necessarily live otherwise. And if the use of certain things seems to be like ours with the gentiles—such as food and drink, dwellings, garments, baths; and, for those of ours who lead a conjugal life, the marrying and having of wives, the begetting, rearing, and making heirs of children—yet he uses these things far otherwise who refers their use to another end; and otherwise he who gives thanks to God for these things, of whom he believes nothing depraved and false. For just as in your very error, although you feed on the same bread as other men, and live on fruits and springs, and are clothed with wool and linen likewise woven, yet in these things you do not lead an equal life—not by eating, or drinking, or being clothed differently, but by feeling and believing differently, and referring all these things to another end, namely the end of your error and vanity: so we, both in these and in other things which we likewise take, do not live like the gentiles, referring the same things not to the same end, but to the end of the lawful and divine commandment, love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, from which certain men, straying, were turned to empty talk. In which indeed you hold the primacy, not noticing, not considering, that in having and doing the same things, so great a difference toward a diverse life avails, if the faith is diverse—so that, when your Hearers both have wives, and beget children though unwilling, and amass or guard patrimonies for them, eat flesh, drink wine, bathe, reap, gather the vintage, do business, administer public honors, you nonetheless reckon them with you, not with the gentiles, though their deeds seem more like the gentiles' than yours. For when the deeds of certain gentiles are nearer to you than to certain of your Hearers—for some, in their sacrilegious rites, abstain even from wine and flesh and intercourse—you rather number among Mani's flock your Hearers, using all these things, and unlike you in this, than those gentiles doing the same things you do; and you rather call yours a woman who has believed in Mani, even one bearing children, than a Sibyl not even marrying. But, you say, many are called catholic Christians, and are adulterers, robbers, misers, drunkards, and whatever else is opposed to sound doctrine. But what of you—in your so scanty and almost nonexistent number, are not very many such, while some among the pagans are not such? Do you therefore call the pagans who are not such better than you? And yet, on account of the sacrilegious vanity of your sect, even those among you who are not such are worse than even such pagans. Whence it is manifest that sound doctrine, which alone is catholic, is not on that account disparaged because many wish to be reckoned by its name and are unwilling to be healed by it. For that fewness is to be recognized which the Lord especially commends amid the vast and innumerable multitude spread through the whole world (See Mt 20:16)—which fewness of the saints and faithful, nonetheless (a thing often to be commended), is called fewness as it were of grains in comparison with the multitude of chaff; but in itself it makes so great a mass of wheat that it surpasses by an incomparable multitude all your approved and reprobate, whom truth alike reproves. Behold, we are not a schism of the gentiles, from whom we differ greatly for the better; but neither are you this, because you differ greatly from them for the worse.

1. FAUSTUS said: Is there one God, or two? Plainly one. How, then, do you assert two? Never, indeed, in our assertions has the name of two gods been heard. But whence you suspect this, I desire to know. Because you hand down two principles, of good things and of evil. There is indeed the fact that we confess two principles, but one of these we call God, the other Hyle; or, to put it commonly and in the usual way, a demon. But if you think this signifies two gods, you could also, when a physician discourses about sickness and health, think these two are healths; and when someone names good and evil, you could think these two are goods; and hearing of plenty and want, you would think these two are plenties. And if, when I discourse about white and black, and cold and hot, and sweet and bitter, you say that I have shown two whites, and two hots, and two sweets, will you not seem out of your mind, and of a brain not at all sound? So too, when I teach two principles, God and Hyle, I ought not on that account to seem to you to show two gods. Or is it because we assign all maleficent force to Hyle, and the beneficent to God, as is fitting, that you therefore think it makes no difference whether we call each of them God? But if it is so, you could also, hearing of poison and antidote, think it makes no difference whether each be called antidote, because each of them has its own force, each does and works something; and also, hearing of a physician and a poisoner, you would call both physicians; and hearing of a just man and an unjust, you could call both just, because each of them does something. But if to do this is absurd, how much more absurd to think God and Hyle two gods, because each of them works something? Wherefore this argument is inept and quite drained of force, that, because you cannot answer me on the matter, you stir up odium from names alone. For I do not deny that we too sometimes name the adverse nature "god"—but not according to our faith, but according to the name already presumed for it by its worshipers, who imprudently judge it to be a god: just as the Apostle too says, The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor 4:4)—naming it "god," because it was so already called by its own; but adding that it blinds minds, so that from this it may be understood not to be the true God.

2. AUGUSTINE replied: We are indeed accustomed to hear of two gods in your disputations—which, although you first denied it, yet a little after you yourself even confessed, as it were giving a reason why you say this: because the Apostle too says, The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. This sentence indeed very many of us so punctuate as to say that the true God blinded the minds of unbelievers. For when they have read, In whom God, they suspend the utterance, and then bring in: has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world. For even if you do not punctuate it thus, but, for the sake of exposition, so change the order of the words: In whom God has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world, the same sense shines forth as in that punctuation. For even such an operation, by which the minds of unbelievers are blinded, can in a certain manner pertain to the true God—which not malice does, but justice: as the same Paul says elsewhere, Is God unjust, who inflicts wrath? (Rom 3:5) Likewise elsewhere: What then shall we say? he says, Is there injustice with God? Far be it. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have been merciful (Rom 9:14–15; Exod 33:19). When, therefore, he had premised what must be held unshaken, that there is no injustice with God, notice a little after what he says: But if God, willing to show wrath and to demonstrate his power, bore with much patience the vessels of wrath, which are fitted for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory, and so on (Rom 9:22–23). Surely here it can in no way be said that one God shows wrath and demonstrates his power upon the vessels fitted for destruction, and another shows the riches upon the vessels of mercy. For that one and the same God does both, the apostolic doctrine bears witness. Hence too that saying: For this reason God handed them over to the desires of their heart, to uncleanness, so that they dishonor their bodies among themselves; and a little after: Therefore God handed them over to passions of ignominy; likewise a little after: And since they did not approve of having God in their knowledge, God handed them over to a reprobate sense (Rom 1:24, 26, 28). Behold how the true and just God blinds the minds of unbelievers. For never in these words of the Apostle which I have mentioned was any other God understood than he who sent his Son saying: For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (Jn 9:39). For here too it sufficiently appears to the minds of the faithful how God blinds the minds of unbelievers. For something hidden goes before in hidden things, where God works the most just examination of his judgment, so that the minds of some are blinded, of some enlightened: to whom it was most truly said, Your judgments are a great deep (Ps 36:7 (35:7)). The impenetrable height of which depth the Apostle, marveling, exclaims: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments!, and so on (Rom 11:33)

3. But you, unable to discern what God does by benefit, what by judgment—because both from your heart and from your mouth our Psalter is far, where it is said, Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord (Ps 101:1 (100:1))—whatever offends you on account of the weakness of human mortality, you alienate entirely from the choice and judgment of the true God: having, namely, another evil god ready, whom not truth shows you but vanity feigns, to whom you may attribute not only whatever you do unjustly, but even whatever you suffer justly; thus attributing to God the benefits of gifts, and taking from him the judgments of punishments, as if Christ said of another, that he prepared eternal fire for the wicked (See Mt 25:41), than of him who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust (See Mt 5:45). Whence do you not understand that so great a goodness here, and so great a severity there, pertain to one God, except because you do not know how to sing mercy and judgment? Is not the same one who makes his sun rise upon the good and the bad, and rains upon the just and the unjust, yet the one who breaks the natural branches and against nature grafts in the wild olive? Does not the Apostle say of one and the same there: You see, then, the goodness and the severity of God: toward those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you remain in goodness (Rom 11:17–24)? Surely you hear, surely you notice, how he neither takes from God his judiciary severity, nor from man his free will. It is hidden, it is deep, shut off by an inaccessible secret from human thought, how God both condemns the impious and justifies the impious: for the truth of the holy Scriptures speaks both of him. Does it then please you to prattle against the divine judgments, because they are unsearchable? How much more fitting, how much more suited to our small measure, to be afraid there where Paul was afraid, and to exclaim: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways! (Rom 11:33) How much better to so marvel at what you cannot trace out, than on that account to wish to feign another evil god, because you could not comprehend the one good one? For the question is not about a name, but about a work.

4. For Faustus quickly seems to have defended himself when he says: "We do not say two gods, but God and Hyle." Yet when you ask what he calls Hyle, you will plainly hear another god described. For if a formless matter, capable of corporeal forms, were called by them Hyle, as it was called by the ancients, none of us would object that it is called god. But as it is, how great an error, how great a madness, either to call the matter of bodies the maker of bodies, or to deny that the maker of bodies is God! Since, then, what the true God does—that is, the qualities and forms of bodies, of elements, of animals, so that they are bodies, elements, animals—you say that some other one or other does, by whatever name you call him, you are rightly said to introduce, by your error, another god. For in this one matter you err twice with a sacrilegious error: once, indeed, in that you say the things God does are done by him whom you blush to confess as God—but in no way will you bring it about that he is not God, unless you deny that he does such things as none but God does; and again, in that the things which the good God makes good, you suppose both to be made by an evil one and to be evil, shuddering with a childish sense at the things that are unsuited to the weakness of penal mortality, and loving those that are suited. Accordingly you call evil him who made the snake; but this sun you think so great a good that you believe it not even made by God, but brought forth or sent. But the true God—in whom that you do not yet believe I grieve too much—both made the snake among other lower things, and the sun among other higher things; and still, in higher things—not corporeal heavenly things, but already spiritual ones—many things far better than this light, which no carnal man perceives: how much less you, who, when you detest the flesh, detest nothing but your own rule, by which you measure good and evil? For there can be in you no thought either of evils, except such as offend the carnal sense; or of goods, except such as delight the carnal eye.

5. So that I may consider those works of God at the bottom of things—earthly, weak, mortal, but yet works of God, such as we can see—I am ineffably moved by praise of their Creator, who is so great in great works that he is not less in the least. For the divine art, by which heavenly and earthly works are made, although these are unlike one another, is itself like itself in all things, because in perfecting each in its own kind it is everywhere perfect. For it does not found the universe in single things, but, founding single things toward the embrace of the universe, presents itself whole to the founding of single things too, making and disposing all things fittingly in their places and orders, and granting to all, particularly and universally, what is fitting. Behold here, in this as it were lowest base of the whole creation, look at the animals that fly, and swim, and walk, and creep. Surely they are mortal; surely their life, as it is written, is a vapor appearing for a little while (Jas 4:14). For this small measure, received from the best Founder, they confer as it were in common to the universe, for the completing of the portion of their own kind, so that with these lowest things all good things may be, among which the higher are better than they. Nevertheless, attend, and give me any one, however most abject, animal whose soul hates its own flesh, and does not rather nourish and cherish it, and by vital motion quicken and rule it, and in a manner administer, for the smallness of its kind, a certain universe of its own, conciliated to itself for the guarding of its safety. For in that the rational soul chastises its body and subjects it to servitude, lest by an immoderate appetite of earthly things it be hindered from the perception of wisdom, even so it surely loves its own flesh, which it lawfully subjects and orders to obey it. Finally, you yourselves, although by a carnal error you detest the flesh, cannot but love your own flesh, and provide for its safety and soundness, avoiding all blows, and falls, and the inclemency by which it is harmed, but seeking the defenses and healthfulness by which it is preserved: thus you show that the law of nature prevails against the opinion of your error.

6. What of the vital organs in the flesh itself, the harmony of the whole form, the members for working, the vessels for perceiving, all distinguished in their places and offices, and woven together in concordant unity, by the moderation of measures, the equality of numbers, the order of weights—do they not point to their craftsman, the true God, to whom it was truly said: You have arranged all things in measure, and number, and weight (Wis 11:20 (11:21))? If, then, you had a heart not perverse and corrupted by vain fables, you would clearly see his invisible things, understood even through these things which are made in this weak and carnal creature (See Rom 1:20). For whence do these creatures have the things I have mentioned, except from him by whose unity all measure is set, by whose wisdom all beauty is formed, by whose law all order is disposed? But if you have no eye for beholding these things, let the apostolic authority lead you.

7. For the Apostle, when he was commanding concerning holy love, of what kind the love of husbands toward their wives ought to be, took an example from the soul of the lover. He who loves his wife, he says, loves himself: for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church (Eph 5:28–29). Behold, in your sight is the whole carnal substance; see how into every animal conciliated to itself for safety this communion of nature extends, so that it loves its own flesh. For this is not only in men, who, when they live rightly, not only provide for the safety of their flesh, but even tame and bridle the carnal motions to the use of reason; but even the beasts flee pain, dread destruction; and whatever can scatter and sever from its concordant joining that fitting-together and bond of members, of flesh and spirit, they avoid with as great an agility as they can, themselves too nourishing and cherishing their own flesh. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes, he says, and cherishes it, as Christ also the Church. See whence, to what height he has ascended: behold, if you can, what force the creature draws from the Creator, from the very heavenly arrays down to flesh and blood, bounded by the fullness of the universe, adorned by the variety of forms, ordered by the gradations of things.

8. Again the same Apostle, when he was teaching us concerning the diverse spiritual gifts, yet consonant unto unity—a thing plainly great and divine and hidden—gave a likeness from this very flesh of ours, whose craftsman, God, when he spoke these things, he by no means passed over in silence. And although it is long, yet, because it is very necessary, I will not be loath to insert that whole passage from his Epistle to the Corinthians into this work. But concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were gentiles, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says "Anathema to Jesus"; and no one can say "The Lord Jesus" except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit: to one indeed is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the gift of healings in the one Spirit; to another the workings of powers; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of speeches; but all these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each his own as he wills. For just as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free; and we all drank one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? Or if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body as he willed. But if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you; but much rather the members of the body which seem to be weaker are more necessary; and those which we think to be the more dishonorable parts of the body, on these we bestow more abundant honor; and our unseemly parts have more abundant comeliness; but our comely parts have no need: but God has tempered the body, giving more abundant honor to that which lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but the same, that the members should be solicitous for one another; and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together (1 Cor 12:1–26). If there is any—I do not say Christian faith, that you should believe the Apostle, but—any human sense in you, that you may perceive manifest things, let each one see and consider these things in himself, how true, how certain they are, how great in a small thing, and in the lowest how good: since the Apostle sets these things down in praise, so that through these lowest corporeal things which are seen, those sublime spiritual things which are not seen may more easily be understood.

9. Whoever, then, denies that God is the craftsman of these members and of our body, which the Apostle so commends, so praises, you see whom he contradicts, announcing to you besides what we have received (See Gal 1:9). What need, then, is there that he be refuted by me, rather than anathematized by all Christians? The Apostle says, God has tempered the body (1 Cor 12:24); and this man says, Hyle, not God. What is more open than these enmities, to be anathematized before they are refuted? Did the Apostle here too, when he said "God," add "of this world" (2 Cor 4:4)? Where, even if anyone understands the devil to blind the minds of unbelievers, we do not deny it—by evil persuasions; and those who consent to them lose the light of justice, God repaying what is just. All these things we read in the holy Scriptures: for that too was said of seduction coming from without: I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity that is in Christ (2 Cor 11:3). To which is like: Evil conversations corrupt good morals (1 Cor 15:33); and that whereby each is a seducer to himself: But he who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, seduces himself (Gal 6:3); and that concerning God's vengeance, which I mentioned above: God handed them over to a reprobate sense, to do the things that are not fitting (Rom 1:28). So too in the ancient books, when it had foretold, God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living (Wis 1:13), a little after it says: By the envy of the devil death entered into the world (Wis 2:24). And again concerning death itself, lest men set themselves outside of fault: But the impious by their hands and words, it says, summoned it; and counting it a friend, they pined away (Wis 1:16). But elsewhere: Good things and evil, life and death, riches and poverty, are from the Lord God (Sir 11:14). Here troubled men do not understand that in one and the same evil work—not afterward, with another that will be manifest following, but with a certain vengeance immediately accompanying—one thing comes from the cunning of the one persuading, another from the wickedness of the one willing, another from the justice of the one punishing: when the devil suggests, man consents, God deserts. Wherefore in an evil work—that is, the blinding of unbelievers—if the devil too be understood, on account of the malignity of persuading, so that "the god of this world" be so distinguished, it does not seem to me absurd. For it is not said without an addition, "god," when there is joined "of this world"—that is, of impious men, willing to flourish only in this world: according to which the world too is called evil, as it is written, That he might rescue us from the present evil world (Gal 1:4). For such is that too: Whose god is the belly (Phil 3:19): were there not there "whose," it would in no way say "god, the belly." Nor in the Psalm could demons be called gods, unless there were added "of the gentiles." For thus it is written: For the gods of the gentiles are demons (Ps 96:5 (95:5)). But here it is neither "the god of this world," nor "whose god is the belly," nor "the gods of the gentiles are demons," but it is set down simply: God has tempered the body; which cannot be understood except as the true God, creator of all. For those things are said with reproach, but this with praise. Unless perhaps Faustus understands that God tempered the body not by the disposition of the members—that is, by fabricating and constructing it—but by an admixture of his own light: so that, namely, another set these members thus distinguished and located in their seats, who fabricated this; but God, by mixing in his goodness, tempered the malice of this fabric. For with such fables they dull childish souls. But God, succoring the little ones through the mouths of his saints, did not permit them to say even this. For you have also a little above: God has set the members, each one of them, in the body as he willed (1 Cor 12:18). Who now does not understand that, according to this, God was called the temperer of the body, in that he fabricated the body from many members, which preserve the offices of diverse works in the framework of unity?

10. Let the Manicheans, then, say whether the animals which, according to their ravings, Hyle had fabricated in the nation of darkness before God had mixed his light into them, did not have this concord of members which the Apostle so praises: whether there the head would say to the feet, or the eye to the hand, I have no need of you (1 Cor 12:21). Never did they say this, nor could they say it: for they attribute to them such acts and works—they crept, walked, swam, flew, each according to its kind; they also saw, and heard, and perceived by the other senses, and nourished and cherished their own bodies with suitable foods and temperings. Hence too fertility of offspring was at hand: for they assign marriages to them too. All these things, certainly, which Mani reproaches as the works of Hyle, cannot happen without the concord of members which the Apostle praises and assigns to God. Do you still doubt who is to be followed, and who is to be anathematized? What of the fact that there were there certain ones who even spoke, so that, when they harangued, all the creeping, four-footed, flying, swimming things heard, understood, consented? Marvelous this, and altogether divine eloquence; and they had heard no grammarian or rhetorician, nor had they learned these things amid the tears of ferules and rods. Surely this Faustus, in order to prattle these vanities eloquently, came even late to the discipline of making a speech; and although he was sharp in talent, yet by reading he burst his stomach, so that so few assented to him as he spoke. O wretched man, who was born in this light, and not in those darknesses! For there, every two-footed, every many-footed creature, every serpent too, from the dragon to the snail, would gladly hear him haranguing against the light, and would briskly obey; but here, as he disputed against the darkness, the more named him eloquent than learned, and many a most perverse seducer; and among the few Manicheans applauding him as a great master, no beast nodded to him, nor did even his nag know anything from that doctrine—as if for all animals the divine part was congealed for this purpose, that they should become stupid. What is this, I ask? Wake up at last, wretches, and compare, in your fable, the former time and the present of all living things—then in their own land, now in this world: then their bodies were strong, now they are weak; then the keen edge of the eyes for seeing, with delight in invading the region of God, now so dulled that it is turned away from the sun's rays; then the minds of animals enlarged for understanding the speech of the one haranguing, now dull and utterly estranged from any such capacity; then a natural eloquence so great and so powerful, now scarcely a small and scanty one with such great zeal and labor. O how great goods the nation of darkness lost by the commingling of the good!

11. This very Faustus, in this very discourse to which I am now replying, seemed elegantly to set against each other many contraries: health and sickness, plenty and want, white and black, hot and cold, sweet and bitter. Among these I forbear to say anything about white and black; or, if there is any weight of good and evil in colors, so that they say white pertains to God but black to Hyle—since they declare that Hyle created all kinds of birds—if God sprinkled the white color on their feathers, where were the ravens hiding when the swans were suffused with whiteness? Likewise there is no need to discuss hot and cold: for each, applied with moderation, is healthful, but immoderately, ruinous. Let us see the rest. Good and evil, which perhaps he ought to have set first among these same contraries, he seems to have so set that he wished them understood as general categories—namely, so that to good pertain health, plenty, white, hot, sweet; but to evil, sickness, want, black, cold, bitter: how ignorantly and inconsiderately, let him see who can. But I, lest I be thought to slander the man, object nothing about white and black, hot and cold, sweet and bitter, health and sickness. For if white and sweet are two goods, but black and bitter two evils, how is it that very many a grape, and every olive, by blackening grows sweet—that is, by having more of evil becomes better? Likewise, if heat and health are two goods, but cold and sickness two evils, why do bodies grow sick by growing hot? Or do the healthy perhaps have a fever? These things, then, I do not object, which he perhaps incautiously, or as instances of any contraries rather than of goods and evils, mentioned: especially since they have never said that the fire of the nation of darkness was cold, but that its heat was surely evil.

12. But, to omit these, let us see those things which he so mentioned as goods among these contraries that he would not have it doubted: health, plenty, sweetness. Was there, then, no health of bodies in that nation, in which those animals could be born, and grow, and beget, and so endure, that when some of them, pregnant, were—as they dote—captured and bound up in heaven, the fetuses, not even full-term but premature, falling from such a height to the earth, could both live and grow and propagate these innumerable kinds of flesh that now exist? Or was there no plenty there, where trees could be born not only in waters and winds, but even in fire and smoke, and be enriched with such great fecundity that from their fruits the animals of each their own kind were begotten, and, nourished and fed by the fruitfulness of those trees, were preserved, whose fattening the fecundity of offspring too attested with joy: especially where there was no labor of agriculture, nor the inclemency of summer and winter; for the sun did not go about there, so that the seasons of the year should run their course in alternation? Accordingly there was a perpetual fertility of trees, which had at hand perpetually the element and the nourishment of their kind—as it had been present for begetting, so for bearing—and made the fruits never fail: just as we see citron trees bear flowers and fruits the whole year, if they are continually watered. Great plenty, then, was there, and great security in having it: for not even hail was feared, where there were no exactors of light, whom you fable to stir up the thunders.

13. But if they did not have their own sweet and pleasant foods, they would never seek them, never would they invigorate their bodies by them. For the matter stands thus, that, according to the suitability of each body, the food either delights or offends. If it delights, it is called sweet or pleasant; but if it offends, bitter, or harsh, or to be rejected for some unpleasantness. Are not we men ourselves so constituted that very often one seeks the food which another shudders at, whether according to the temperament of nature, or according to the use of habit, or according to the disposition of health? How much more can bodies of beasts of far diverse kinds find pleasant what is bitter to us! Or would goats otherwise be strung up to gnaw the wild olive? For just as to some, by a disease of men, honey is bitter, so to the nature of cattle the wild olive is pleasant. Thus there is suggested to prudent examiners of things what force order has—namely, when to each are applied and rendered the things proper to it; and how great a good this is, from lowest to highest, from corporeal to spiritual things. And so in the nation of darkness, when an animal of some element fed on the food that was born in its own element, the suitability itself doubtless produced sweetness; but if it had fallen upon the food of another element, the unsuitability itself would produce an offense to the sense of the one tasting: which offense—whether bitterness, or harshness, or unpleasantness, or whatever else, or, if it is so excessive that by an alien force it breaks up the framework and concord of the body, and so destroys it or takes away its strength—is even called poison, only through unsuitability, what to another kind is, through suitability, food: just as bread, which is our daily food, if a hawk takes it, kills it; and us, if hellebore, on which very many cattle feed; of which herb, nonetheless, a certain measure, when applied, is even medicine. And if Faustus knew or considered this, he would surely not set poison and antidote as an example of the two natures, of evil and good, as though God were the antidote and Hyle the poison: when one and the same thing and one and the same nature, taken or applied now suitably, now unsuitably, either profits or harms. And so, according to their fable, it can be said that their god was poison to the nation of darkness, whose so firm bodies he so corrupted that he rendered them most feeble; but because the light itself too was captured, oppressed, corrupted, they were poison to each other in turn.

14. Why, then, do you not say these are either two goods or two evils, or rather both two goods and two evils—two goods in themselves, two evils toward each other? Afterward, if there be need, we will ask which of these is better or worse: for the present, because they were two goods in themselves, it is thus considered: God reigned in his own land, Hyle reigned too in hers. Health of the reigning both there and here; plenty of fruits both there and here; fecundity of offspring on both sides; sweetness of their own pleasures with both. But that nation, they say, except that it was evil toward the neighboring light, was evil also toward itself. For the present I have already said many of its goods; if you too can show its evils, there will be two good kingdoms, but that better one where there was no evil: what, then, do you say were the evils of this one? They laid waste, he says, harmed, killed, consumed one another. If only this were carried on there, how would so great hosts be begotten there, nourished, brought to completion? There was, then, both rest and peace there. Nevertheless, let us confess that that was the better kingdom, where there was no discord: yet I would say much more aptly that these were two goods than that one was good and the other evil; so that that is the better where neither did individuals harm themselves, nor one another; but this a lower good, where, although they were adverse to one another, yet each animal guarded its own safety, soundness, and nature. Nevertheless, at least that prince of darkness can be compared, not by so long an interval, to your god—he whom no one resisted, whom, reigning, all things served, whom, haranguing, all things followed; which could not happen without great peace and concord. For there are happy kingdoms where, with the full consent of all, the kings are obeyed. To this is added that to that prince not only those of his own kind—that is, the two-footed, whom you call the parents of men—but even all kinds of the other animals were subject, and were turned at his nod, doing what he had commanded, believing what he had persuaded. Saying these things, do you suppose the hearts of men so deaf as to expect another god to be named by you, whom they see plainly and openly described? For if this prince's forces could do this, great power; if honor, great splendor; if love, great concord; if fear, great discipline. If in all these goods there were some evils, is its nature on that account to be called evil—except by those who do not know what they say? Further, if you therefore think it a nature of evil, because it was evil not only toward the other nature, but also had evil in itself, do you judge no evil that hard necessity which your god suffered before the commingling of the contrary nature—that he was compelled to war with it, and to send his members into its jaws, to be so oppressed that it could not be wholly purified? Behold, there was a great evil even in itself, before there was mingled with it what alone you call evil. For either it could not be harmed and corrupted by the nation of darkness, and by its own folly suffered that necessity; or, if its substance could be corrupted, you do not worship an incorruptible God, such as the Apostle preaches (See 1 Tim 1:17). What then? Does not even that very corruptibility, by which indeed that nature was not yet being corrupted, but by which nonetheless it could be corrupted, seem to you an evil in your god?

15. Who too does not see this, that either there was no foreknowledge there—where it is now your task to consider whether it is no fault of God to lack foreknowledge, and to be utterly ignorant of what threatens—or, if there was foreknowledge there, there could be no security there, but eternal fear; and how great an evil this is, you surely acknowledge. Or did he not fear lest at any moment the time should come when his members would be so laid waste and defiled in that battle that scarcely, with such great labor—and yet not wholly—would they be freed and cleansed? But if this did not pertain to himself—which indeed you see how harshly it is said—certainly those very members of his, which were going to suffer such great evils here, surely feared. Or did they not know this would be? Therefore, to whatever part of the substance of your god foreknowledge was surely lacking. Count up the evils in your highest good. Or did they not fear, because they foresaw alike their own coming liberation and triumph? Surely at least they feared for their associates, whom they knew would be alienated from their kingdom by eternal chains in that globe.

16. Or was there no love there, so that there was no fraternal compassion, surely for those upon whom, with no preceding sin, eternal punishments hung? What of those very souls to be bound in the globe—were not they too members of your god? Is it not one kind and one substance? They at least, foreknowing their own everlasting chain to come, surely feared, surely mourned. Or if they did not know this would be, one part of your god was provident, another improvident: how, then, is it one and the same substance? Since, then, so great evils were there too, before there was a commingling of an alien evil, why do you glory in it as a pure and simple and highest good? Therefore even in themselves you are compelled to confess these two natures to be either two goods or two evils. We grant you, if you say two evils, that you may say which of them you wish the worse; but if two goods, say which of them is the better—there will be a more careful consideration afterward; provided only that that error of yours be removed, by which you say there are two principles of two natures, the good and the evil; and plainly two gods, one good and the other evil. Now if something is evil for this reason, that it harms another, these harmed each other in turn: one part was the more reprobate, because it first sought another's. One, then, wished to inflict evil, the other repaid evil for evil—and not by the law of retaliation, as it were an eye for an eye (See Exod 21:24), which you are accustomed imprudently and impudently to reproach, but much more grievously. Choose, then, which you call the worse: the one that first wished to harm, or the one that both wished and was able to harm more. For the former coveted to enjoy the light according to its small measure; the latter uprooted it utterly. The former, if it had fulfilled what it sought, would surely have done itself no harm; but the latter, in order utterly to overturn the hostile adversity, grievously harmed even its own part. As is that most famous and frenzied sentence, committed to the memory of certain writings: Let friends perish, provided enemies fall along with them (Cicero, Pro Deiotaro 9.25). For a part of god was sent to inexpiable contamination, that there might be wherewith to cover the globe in which the living enemy is to be buried forever: for he will be so feared even when conquered, will so terrify when shut up, that the everlasting misery of a part of god will grant to the rest of god some kind of security. O great innocence of goodness! Behold, your god too will do that for which you horribly accuse the nation of darkness, namely, that he harms both his own and others. That last globe convicts your god of this very thing, in which both the enemy is shut up and the citizen is fixed: nay rather, that part which you call god surpasses it in harming more, both others and his own. For Hyle did not wish to uproot the alien kingdom, but to hold it; but its own, even when by destroying it killed some of them by means of certain others of its own, it nonetheless changed anew into other forms, so that, by dying and being reborn, they might at least, through the intervals of times, enjoy the gladness of their life: but God—such as you describe him, almighty and best—both uproots others forever, and condemns his own; and, what is believed with a more marvelous madness, Hyle harms her own animals in her own battle, God punishes his own members in his own victory. What is this, vain men? Surely you remember Faustus's words about God as an antidote, and Hyle as poison: behold, your antidote harms more than the poison. Would Hyle shut up either God or her own entrails forever in so horrendous a globe? And, what is more wicked, he slanders those very relics, lest he seem to have failed, in that he could not purify them. For Mani says, in the Letter of the Foundation, that those souls become worthy of such punishment because they allowed themselves to stray from their former luminous nature, and stood forth as enemies of the holy light—when he himself sent them into that error, by which they would be so darkened as to become a light hostile to the light; if unwilling, he is unjust, for compelling them; if willing, he is ungrateful, for condemning them. If they were able to foreknow that they would be enemies of their own origin, then both before the war they were tortured with fear, and in the war inexpiably stained, and after the war condemned forever, never blessed. But if they were not able to foreknow it, then both before the war they were improvident, and in the war weak, and after the war wretched, never divine. And surely what they are, that God is, according to the unity of substance. Do we think you consider how monstrously you blaspheme? And yet sometimes, wishing as it were to defend the goodness of God, you say that even to Hyle herself some good is granted, so that, shut up in herself, she does not rage. She will have, then, some good, when no good has been mingled with her? Or perhaps, just as God before the war, without commingling of evil, had the evil of necessity, so Hyle after the war, without commingling of good, will have the good of cessation? Say, then, two evils, but one worse than the other; or two not highest goods, but one better than the other—yet so, indeed, that what is better, this you call the more wretched: for if of so great a war the outcome here will be that, with Hyle conquered, by her own devastation and by God's members fixed in the globe, some good is granted to the enemies, and so great an evil inflicted on the citizens, consider who has conquered. But of course Hyle is poison, who was able to form, strengthen, nourish, invigorate her own animals; and God is the antidote, who was able to condemn, but unable to heal, his own members. Madmen, that is not Hyle, nor is he God. Thus rave those who, not enduring sound doctrine, turn to fables (See 2 Tim 4:3–4).

1. FAUSTUS said: Why do you blaspheme the Law and the Prophets? We are by no means enemies, or foes, of the Law and the Prophets—nor indeed of anyone at all: so much so that, if it were now permitted us through them, we would be ready to confess that all those things are false which are written about them, and for the sake of which they seem to us hateful. But you resist, and, by assenting to your own writers, perhaps bring innocent Prophets into accusation, defame the Patriarchs, dishonor the Law too; and, what is more foolish, you want both your writers not to be liars and yet those men, whose disgraces and base lives they wrote, to be religious and holy. But because both cannot stand together equally—for it must be either that these were wicked, or that those were liars and false.

2. Come now, if you please, with the writers condemned by common assent, let us undertake the defense of the Law and the Prophets. But by "the Law" I now mean not circumcision, nor the Sabbaths, and sacrifices, and the other such things of the Jews, but that which truly is law—that is, You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not swear falsely (Exod 20:13, 14, 16), and the rest. Upon it—long ago spread abroad among the nations, that is, from the time the creation of this world subsists—the writers of the Hebrews rushing, as upon a leprosy and a scab, mingled in these abominable and most base precepts of theirs, which look to circumcision and sacrifices; come now, if you too are surely a friend of the Law, condemn with me those who dared to violate it by this commingling of precepts unsuited to it. Which precepts, unless you too knew them to be no law, nor a part of the law, you would surely either strive to keep them, professing righteousness, or confess to yourselves that you are not righteous. But as it is, both about those commandments which forbid crimes you have a solicitous care, wishing to live rightly; and about those which pertain to the Jews no mention is made: which, how will it be excused for you, unless it be established that this is not the Law? Finally, if—as you would take it an intolerable reproach, and be inflamed, if anyone called you negligent of this precept by which it was said, You shall not kill, or You shall not commit adultery—you would likewise blaze up if anyone called you both uncircumcised and negligent of the Sabbath; then there would doubtless be an understanding that both were law and a commandment of God. But as it is, both for those former ones you seek praise and glory, if you keep them; and for these you fear no loss of the same good, because you despise them. Wherefore it is established that these, as I said, are not the Law, but rather the spots and the scab of the Law: which, if they are condemned by us, are condemned as false, not as lawful. Nor does this reproach touch the Law, nor God the author of the Law, but those who inscribed him and it with their nefarious religions. But that we sometimes assail the revered name of the Law, when we attack the Jewish precepts, comes about by your fault, who wish there to be no distinction between the Hebrew institutions and the Law: otherwise, render to the Law its proper dignity, cut away the Israelite basenesses from it like warts, impute the crime of its disfigurement to the writers, and you will at once see that we have been enemies of Judaism, not of the Law. It is the name of the Law that deceives you: because you do not know to whom it ought rightly to be ascribed.

3. To these things, why you should suppose that we blaspheme your Prophets and Patriarchs, I do not see. For if these things which they are read to have committed had been written or dictated by us, this accusation of yours against us would be not irrational; but where the same things were written either by themselves, against the custom of honesty, snatching glory from vices, or by their associates and equals, what fault in this is ours? For we condemn, detesting them, the iniquitous deeds which the guilty confessed of themselves, of their own accord and unasked; or, if the malice of the writers feigned these things against them through envy, let the writers be punished, let their books be condemned, let the prophetic name be cleansed of unworthy report, let the authority of the Patriarchs be restored to its own gravity and censorship.

4. And indeed it could be that, just as those same writers shamelessly feigned so many things about God—now saying that he dwelt from eternity in darkness, and afterward marveled when he had seen the light; now ignorant of the future, so that he gave to Adam a precept which Adam would not keep; now even improvident, so that he could not see his man hiding in a corner of paradise after his nakedness was known; now even envious and fearful, lest, if his man tasted of the tree of life, he should live forever; now, on other occasions, both desiring blood and fat from every kind of sacrifice, and jealous if the same were offered to others as to himself; and now angry at strangers, now even at his own; now destroying thousands of men for light or even no offenses; now even threatening that he would come with a sword and spare no one, neither the just nor the sinner—it could be, I say, that they lied also about the men of God, who lied about God himself with such great impudence. But you, agree with us, that the writers may bear the charge, if you wish the Prophets to be freed of it.

5. Otherwise, neither did we write those things about Abraham, that, burning with an insane desire of having offspring, and by no means believing God, who had already promised him this from Sarah his wife, he wallowed with a concubine—the more dishonorably—with his wife's knowledge (See Gen 16:2–4). Nor that, a most infamous huckster of his own marriage, for the sake of avarice and the belly he, lying to two kings, Abimelech and Pharaoh, at different times, that the said Sarah his wife was his sister, because she was most beautiful, sold her for intercourse (See Gen 20:2; 12:13). Nor that Lot, his own kinsman, freed from Sodom, lay with his two daughters on the mountain (See Gen 19:33, 35)—who would more honorably have burned in Sodom by the stroke of lightning than blazed on the mountain with the flame of unlawful lust. But neither that Isaac did the same and equal things as his father, with respect to Rebecca his wife, himself too feigning that she was his sister, that through her he might live basely (See Gen 26:7). Nor that Jacob his son, between Rachel and Leah, two own sisters, and each of their handmaids—the husband of four wives—wandered like a goat; so that daily there was a contest among the four harlots, which of them should first seize him, as he came from the field, for intercourse, and sometimes even hired him from one another for the night by wages (See Gen 29–30). Likewise that Judah his son slept with Tamar his daughter-in-law, after the marriages of one and another son, deceived, as they say, by the garb of prostitution (See Gen 38) into which she had transformed herself—she who well knew that her father-in-law always had dealings with this kind of women. Nor that David, after so many wives in number, also committed adultery with the little wife of Uriah his soldier, and destroyed him in the war (See 2 Sam 11:4, 15). Nor that Solomon his son had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, and kings' daughters without number (See 1 Kgs 11:1–3). Nor that Hosea, first of the prophets, had children by a fornicating woman: to which baseness, that it might be worse, the counsel of God too is ascribed (See Hos 1:2–3). But neither that Moses committed homicide (See Exod 2:12), that he despoiled Egypt (See Exod 12:35–36), that he waged wars, that he both commanded and did many cruel things (See Exod 17:9ff), that he himself was not even content with one marriage. These things, I say, and the like, which are found in their various books, were neither written nor dictated by us; but either these are false inventions of your writers, or the crimes of the fathers are true. Choose which of the two you wish: for we must detest either these or those alike, since we hate the wicked and base as much as the lying.

6. AUGUSTINE replied: You understand neither the sacraments of the law nor the deeds of the Prophets, because you know how to think of neither holiness nor righteousness. But about the precepts and sacraments of the Old Testament we have already said much and often, that it might be understood that there was one thing there which, through the grace of the New Testament, was given to be fulfilled by doing it, and another which, through the truth laid open, was shown by being removed to be fulfilled: since, by the love of God and neighbor, the precept of the Law was undertaken to be perfected, but, by the cessation of circumcision and the other sacraments of that time, the promise of the Law was shown to be paid out. For the precept made men guilty, unto the desiring of salvation; but the promise celebrated figures, unto the awaiting of the Savior: so that through the coming of the New Testament grace bestowed might free the men, and truth rendered might remove the figures. For the very Law which was given through Moses became grace and truth through Jesus Christ (See Jn 1:17): grace, namely, so that, with pardon of sins given, what was commanded might be kept by God's gift; but truth, so that, with the observance of shadows removed, what was promised might be made present by faith in God.

7. Accordingly these people, who, reproaching the things they do not understand, say that the promissory figures of the sacraments are a leprosy or scab or warts of the Law, are like men who are displeased by things whose usefulness they do not grasp: as if a deaf man, seeing the lips of speakers move, should reproach the motions of the mouth as superfluous and ugly; or as if some blind man, when a certain house had been praised to him, should wish to test by touching what is said, and, handling the smoothness of the walls with his hand, should rush upon the windows, and find fault with them as unsuited to that evenness, and think them ruinous hollows.

8. Now that the deeds of the Prophets too were themselves prophetic and mystical—what shall I do that they may understand it, whose minds vanity has so occupied that they suppose it is believed by us that even God himself once dwelt in darkness, because it is written, Darkness was over the deep (Gen 1:2)—as though we called God the deep, where the darkness was, because light was not there, before God by his word made light? But because they do not distinguish between the light that is God himself and the light that God made, they therefore think it follows that he himself was in darkness before he made light, since darkness was over the deep before he said, Let there be light; and light was made (Gen 1:3). For just as in the New Testament both are said of him—for we read there both, God is light, and there is no darkness in him (1 Jn 1:5), and likewise there, God, who said that light should shine forth from darkness, has shone in our hearts (2 Cor 4:6)—so too in those ancient books both: it was said of the Wisdom of God, which surely was not made, since through it all things were made (Jn 1:3), It is the brightness of eternal light (Wis 7:26); and of a certain light, which can be made only through it, it is said there in this manner: You will enlighten my lamp, O Lord; my God, you will enlighten my darkness (Ps 18:29 (17:29)). Just as also in the beginning, when darkness was over the deep, God said, Let there be light; and light was made—which he would not have made, except the light-making Light, which is God.

9. For just as God suffices for himself unto eternal blessedness, and from this abounds to make others blessed, so he suffices for himself unto eternal light, and from this abounds to make others enlightened: desiring no one's good, since by him every good will enjoys; fearing no one's evil, since by him every evil will is deserted; for neither does he who is blessed by his gift increase him, nor does he who is wretched by his judgment terrify him. Such a God, Manicheans, you do not worship; far from him have you been made, while you follow your phantasms, which your vain and wandering heart, drawing in this light of the heavenly bodies through the eyes of the flesh, has, by a manifold fiction, expanded and varied for you. This light, although God too made it, is far and incomparably surpassed even by that light which God made in the minds of the devout, which he makes light from darkness, just as he justifies from impiety: how much more by that inaccessible light, which makes all these things? Nor is it inaccessible to all: for Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Mt 5:8). But God is light, and there is no darkness in him: but the impious shall not see the light, as Isaiah says (Isa 59:9–10). To such, then, that light-making Light is inaccessible, which made not only that spiritual light in the minds of the saints, but also this corporeal light: not that it forbids the wicked to approach it, but that it makes it to rise upon the good and the bad (See Mt 5:45).

10. When, therefore, darkness was over the deep, he who was light said, Let there be light. That Light made the light is manifest; for it is manifestly set down, God said; yet what light he made is not so manifest. For whether God then made that light which is in the minds of the angels—that is, the rational spirits themselves—or a certain corporeal light, removed even from our sight in the lofty places of this world, is disputed harmoniously among the studious of the divine Scriptures. For on the fourth day he made these conspicuous luminaries of heaven. Whether these too were made together with their own light, or were in a manner kindled from that which had already been made, is likewise asked. But whatever light was made, when, with darkness over the deep, God said, Let there be light—that a created light was made by the creating Light no one doubts who, by reading the holy Scriptures devoutly, becomes worthy to understand.

11. Nor is God therefore to be thought to have dwelt in darkness before he made light, because the Spirit of God was borne over the waters (Gen 1:2), when it had been said before, Darkness was over the deep. For the deep is an immeasurable depth of waters. Whence it can occur to carnal prudence that the Spirit of God dwelt, as it were, in that darkness which was over the deep, of whom it was said, He was borne over the waters—to one not understanding how light shines in darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it (See Jn 1:5), unless they become light through the word of God, and it be said to them: You were once darkness, but now are light in the Lord (Eph 5:8). But if rational minds, made dark through an impious will, cannot comprehend the light of the wisdom of God, nowhere absent—because they are far from it in disposition, not in place—what wonder if the Spirit of God, who was borne over the waters, was borne even over the darkness of the waters, by an incomparable distance indeed, but of substance, not of places?

12. I know indeed to how deaf men I sing these things; yet I do not despair that the truth of my song will find its own ear, which the Lord has opened, from whom are the true things we say. But these people—what judges of the divine Scriptures we endure!—are displeased even that God's works pleased God, whom they reproach as having marveled, as it were, at an unaccustomed light, because it is written, And God saw the light, that it is good (Gen 1:4)? For he approves his works, because the things he made please him; and this is to see that they are good. For neither is he compelled to do anything unwilling, so as to do what does not please him; nor does he slip improvidently into making anything, so that, once made, it displeases him. But why should it not displease these people that our God saw his work, that it is good—since their god, when he plunged his members into darkness, set a veil against himself? For he did not see what he made, that it is good, but was unwilling to see, because it is evil.

13. Faustus indeed said that our God marveled, which is not written; nor is it at all consequent that, when someone has seen that a thing is good, he should also be said to have marveled. For seeing many good things, we do not marvel, as though they were so beyond our expectation; but we only approve that they ought to be so. Nevertheless, we show them that—not in the Old Testament, which they maliciously slander, but in the New, which, to deceive the ignorant, they accept—God did marvel. For they confess Christ to be God, and set this in their snare as a most sweet bait, by which to catch those devoted to Christ. God, then, marveled, when Christ marveled: for thus it is written in the Gospel, that, having heard the faith of a certain centurion, he marveled, and said to his disciples: Amen, I say to you, I have not found such great faith in Israel (Mt 8:10). Behold, we have expounded as we could, God saw that it is good; and better men perhaps expound these things better: let these people too expound why Jesus marveled at what, before it happened, he foreknew, and, before he heard it, he surely knew. For although it makes a great difference whether someone sees that a thing is good, or even marvels: yet in this there is some likeness, because Jesus too marveled at the light of faith, which he himself had made in the heart of that centurion—he who is the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world (See Jn 1:9).

14. Whom indeed some impious pagan could so slander and reproach in the Gospel as Faustus does God in the Old Testament. For he too would call Christ improvident, not only from this, that he marveled at the centurion's faith, but also that he chose Judas among the disciples, who was not going to keep his commandments (See Jn 6:71): just as this man reproaches why a precept was given in paradise to a man who would not keep it (See Gen 2:16–17; 3:6). He would also find fault with this, that he could not know who had touched him, when she who suffered the flow of blood touched the hem of his garment: just as this man found fault that God did not know where Adam was hiding. I suppose he said, Adam, where are you? (Gen 3:9) as Christ said, Who touched me? (Lk 8:44–45) He would call him envious and fearful, lest, if the other five virgins entered into his kingdom, they should live forever; against whom he so shut the door that he did not open even to those knocking pitiably (Mt 25:11–12), as if forgetting what he himself had promised, saying, Knock, and it shall be opened to you (Mt 7:7): just as this man accuses God of envy and fear, because he did not admit a sinner to eternal life. He would call him desirous, not of the blood of cattle, but of men, because he said, He who loses his soul for my sake will find it unto eternal life (Mt 10:39): just as this man wished to slander concerning the sacrifices of animals, by which figures was promised the sacrifice of the blood by which we have been redeemed. He would reproach him as jealous, because, when he had cast out by scourging the buyers and sellers from the temple, the Evangelist mentioned that it was written of him, The zeal of your house has consumed me (Jn 2:15–17): just as this man accused God of being jealous, because he had forbidden sacrifice to be offered to others. He would call him angry at his own and at strangers: at his own, indeed, because he said, The servant who knows his master's will and does not do things worthy of it will be beaten with many stripes (Lk 12:47); but at strangers, because he said, If anyone does not receive you, shake off the dust from your shoes upon them: amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for that city (Mt 10:14–15): just as this man charges God with being angry, now at strangers, now at his own, both of whom the Apostle mentions, saying, For whoever sinned without the Law will perish without the Law; and whoever sinned in the Law will be judged by the Law (Rom 2:12). He would call him a slaughterer too, and a shedder of the blood of many for light or even no offenses. For a light or no offense it would seem to a pagan either not to have a wedding garment at the wedding feast, on account of which our King in the Gospel commanded the man, with hands and feet bound, to be cast into the outer darkness (See Mt 22:11–13); or to be unwilling that Christ should reign over them, on account of which sin he says, But those who were unwilling that I should reign over them, bring here and kill before me (Lk 19:27): just as this man accused God in the Old Testament, who seemed to him to slaughter thousands of men for light or no offenses. Now as for what Faustus reproaches—God threatening that he would come with a sword, by which he would spare neither the just nor the sinner—how would that pagan reproach it, hearing the apostle Paul say of our God, that he did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all (Rom 8:32); hearing Peter too, when he spoke of the great tribulations and slayings of the saints, exhorting to endurance and saying, It is time for judgment to begin at the house of the Lord; and if the beginning is from us, what will be the end of those who do not believe the Gospel of the Lord? And if the just man will scarcely be saved, where will the sinner and the impious appear? (1 Pet 4:17–18) For what is more just than the Only-begotten, whom yet the Father did not spare? And what is more evident, that he spares not even the just, amending them by the variety of tribulations, since on this matter it is openly said, And if the just man will scarcely be saved? For not only in the Old Testament is it written, For whom God loves, he reproves; and he scourges every son whom he receives (Prov 3:12); and, If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not endure evil things? (Job 2:10)—but also in the New: Those whom I love, I rebuke and chastise (Rev 3:19); and that: For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged, we are reproved by the Lord, lest we be condemned with the world (1 Cor 11:31–32). But still, if a pagan reproached such things in the New Testament as these reproach in the Old, would they not themselves undertake to defend them? But if they could do this, by what madness, finally, do they here reproach such things as they there defend? But if they could not, why do they grant that in one Testament only, and not rather in both, what to the impious who do not understand would seem perverse should be believed by the devout who do not understand to be right, but veiled?

15. Or do they perhaps dare to say that those similar things which we have brought forward from the New Testament are themselves too false and perverse, by that diabolical privilege of theirs, that whatever is in the Gospel or the canonical Epistles by which they think their heresy can be aided, they hold and persuade was said by Christ and the Apostles; but whatever from those same codices sounds against them, they do not hesitate, with shameless and sacrilegious mouth, to call inserted by falsifiers? To which madness of theirs, trying to extinguish and abolish the authority of all the books, I have already above, as far as the plan of the work undertaken seemed to permit, given no few answers.

16. Now I give this admonition: that, since they strive to veil their insane and sacrilegious fables with the cloak of the Christian name, they may yet see that, when they dispute these things against the Christian Scriptures, the truth of the divine codices of both Testaments is defended by us not only against the pagans, but also against the Manicheans. And these things indeed, which just now Faustus set down in his discourse as unworthy of God, from our ancient writings, against a pagan reproaching such things in the evangelical or apostolic discourse too, I would perhaps so defend as to mention equal things about their own authors, as our Paul did among the Athenians (See Acts 17:28). For I would perhaps find in their writings too: a God, creator and fabricator of the world, and establisher of this light, who yet, before he founded it, did not lie in darkness; and one elated with joy from his perfected work, which is surely more than "He saw that it is good"; and a giver of law, which, if a man followed, he would do to his own good, but if he spurned, to his own evil—whom they would not on that account call ignorant of the future, because he gave a law even to those who would despise it in the future. Nor again would they call him improvident, in that he asks something, in whose books many things are asked for no other reason than that each may be convicted by his own answers; since he who asks not only knows what he wishes to be answered him by another, but also that the other will so answer. But that God envies anyone, in that he would not allow the wicked to become blessed, if he wished to say this, he would find their books full on this matter, pertaining to divine providence.

17. But about sacrifices a pagan would object nothing else to me than why we reproach those among them, when in our ancient books our God is read to have commanded such things to be offered to himself. Here I, discussing the true sacrifice perhaps more broadly, would demonstrate that it is owed to none but the one true God—the sacrifice which the one true Priest offered to him, the Mediator of God and men (1 Tim 2:5); whose promissory figures had to be celebrated in the victims of animals, on account of the commendation of the future flesh and blood, through which one victim there would be a remission of the sins contracted from flesh and blood; which will not possess the kingdom of God, because the same substance of the body will be changed into a heavenly quality—which the fire in the sacrifice signified, as it were absorbing death into victory (See 1 Cor 15:50–54). And in that people these things were rightly celebrated, whose both kingdom and priesthood were a prophecy of the future King and Priest, to rule and consecrate the faithful in all nations, and to lead them into the kingdom of heaven and the sanctuary of the angels and eternal life. As, therefore, the Hebrews celebrated the religious proclamations of this true sacrifice, so the pagans the sacrilegious imitations: since what the gentiles immolate, they immolate to demons and not to God, says the Apostle (1 Cor 10:20). For it is an ancient thing, the foretelling immolation of blood, testifying to the future passion of the Mediator from the beginning of the human race: for Abel is found in the sacred writings to have offered this first (See Gen 4:4). It is not, then, a wonder if the prevaricating angels—whose two greatest vices are pride and deceit—flying through this air, exacted for themselves from their worshipers what they knew to be owed to the one true God, by whom they wished to be thought gods, the vanity of the human heart giving them place: especially when, from desire of the dead, images were set up, whence the use of idols arose (See Wis 14:15); and, with greater flattery, divine honors were paid to them as though received into heaven, in whose place demons substituted themselves to be worshiped on earth, and demanded sacrifice to be offered to themselves by the deceived and lost. Sacrifice, then, not only when the true God justly commands it, but even when a false god proudly exacts it, sufficiently shows to whom it is owed. If these things were harder for that pagan to believe, I would persuade him even by prophecy itself, in which were written so long beforehand the things I would show now fulfilled. But if he despised this too, I would acknowledge it rather than marvel: since I would recall, in the truth of that same prophecy, that not all were going to believe.

18. But if he objected to me a jealous Christ or God from either Testament, and assailed the very word, he would show nothing else than that he is either ignorant or careless of all literature. For although their learned men distinguish between "will" and "cupidity," "joy" and "gladness," "caution" and "fear," "clemency" and "mercy," "prudence" and "cunning," "confidence" and "audacity"; and many in this manner, so that, in these pairs of words, those I set first they assign to virtues, those I set second to vices—yet their books are full of the abuse of those names which properly signify vices, when even virtues are so called; when either "cupidity" is set for "will," or "gladness" for "joy," or "fear" for "caution," or "mercy" for "clemency," or "cunning" for "prudence," or "audacity" for "confidence." And who could mention all the things that the custom of speech usurps for a like license? To this is added also a certain proper character of each several language. For in ecclesiastical writings I nowhere recall mercy set down in dispraise. With which the custom of daily speech too agrees. The Greeks call by one name two things indeed neighboring, but yet distinct, "toil" and "pain"; we express these by single names: just as by us "life" is called by one name, whether according to which we say "He lives," because he is not lifeless, or according to which we say "He is a man of good life"; but the Greeks signify these two by two words also. Whence it can be that, apart from the abuse of words, which lies wide open in all languages, by some proper character of the Hebrew language too "jealousy" is set in both senses: whether when a mind, troubled by the adultery of a spouse, pines away—which cannot befall God—or when a diligent guard is applied to preserving conjugal chastity, which, that God does it when he addresses his people as a spouse whom he does not wish to fornicate after many false gods, it is useful for us to confess not only without doubt but even with thanksgiving. This too I would say of the anger of God: for God is not troubled when he inflicts wrath; but "anger" is set down for "vengeance," whether by abuse, or by some proper character of the original language.

19. But about the thousands of men killed he would not marvel, if he did not deny the judgment of God: which not even the pagans deny, who grant that this universe is ruled and administered by the providence of God, from the highest to the lowest. But if he denied this too, he would be convicted either more easily by the authority of his own people, or somewhat longer by the disputation of sure reasonings; or, as too hard and stolid, he would be left to that very divine judgment which he would not believe to exist. Further, the light or no offenses, for which God killed men, if he mentioned them expressly, we would show to be neither none nor light: as, for example, what we set down concerning the wedding garment (See Mt 22:11–13), we would demonstrate how great a wickedness it was to approach the sacred wedding seeking glory there not of the bridegroom but his own; or if perhaps that garment were found to signify something else by a better understanding: or, that those are killed before the eyes of the king who were unwilling that he should reign over them (See Lk 19:27), it would appear, perhaps without a long discourse of ours, that just as it is no fault of a man if he were unwilling that any man should reign over him, so it is no or but a small fault to be unwilling that he should reign over him, in whose kingdom alone one lives rightly, blessedly, and forever.

20. Now that last point which Faustus set down, lying in wait against the ancient books as though they disparaged God, that he threatens a sword by which he will spare no one, neither the just nor the sinner—when it was expounded to a pagan how it is to be taken, he would perhaps resist neither the New nor the Old Testament, and the evangelical likeness would please him, which to these people, who wish to be held Christians, either does not appear, as to the blind, or displeases, as to the perverse. For that highest husbandman of the vine (See Jn 15:1) prepares his pruning-knife one way for the fruitful shoots, another for the unfruitful; yet he spares neither the good nor the reprobate—the former to be purged, the latter to be cut off. For there is no man endowed with such great righteousness that the temptation of tribulation is not necessary for him, whether to perfect, or to confirm, or to prove his virtue: unless perhaps these people do not number even Paul the apostle among the just, who, although he humbly and truly confesses his past sins, yet gives thanks that he was justified by faith in Jesus Christ (See 1 Tim 1:13). Or did he spare him, whom the vain do not understand saying, I will spare neither the just nor the sinner? Let them, then, hear him himself: And lest I be exalted, he says, by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me a thorn of the flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me; on account of which I thrice asked the Lord to take it from me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you; for power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor 12:7–9). Behold, he spared not even the just man, that he might perfect his power in weakness—he who had given him an angel of Satan to buffet him: unless you say that the devil gave it. The devil, then, was acting that Paul might not be exalted by the greatness of the revelations, and that his power might be perfected. Who would say this? By him, therefore, the just man had been handed over to be buffeted by an angel of Satan, who through him handed over the unjust too to Satan himself: of whom he says the same, Whom I handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim 1:20). Do you now understand how he from above spares neither the just nor the sinner? Or, because there a sword is named, do you shudder the more? For it is one thing to be buffeted, another to be killed. As if thousands of martyrs were not laid low by diverse kinds of deaths, or as if the persecutors really had this in their power, unless it had been given them from above by him who said, I will spare neither the just nor the sinner; since the very Lord of the martyrs, whom the Father did not spare (Rom 8:32), says most openly to Pilate, You would have no power over me, unless it had been given you from above (Jn 19:11). These pressures and persecutions of the just the same Paul says are an example of the judgment of God (See 2 Thess 1:5). Which sentence is more broadly made manifest by the apostle Peter, as I mentioned above, where he says that it is time for judgment to begin at the house of the Lord. And if the beginning, he says, is from us, what will be the end of those who do not believe the Gospel of God? And if the just man will scarcely be saved, where will the sinner and the impious appear? (1 Pet 4:17–18) For from this it is understood how the impious are not spared, as shoots cut off for burning, when the just are not spared for the perfecting of their purgation. For Peter himself too testifies that these things happen by the will of him who in the ancient books says, I will spare neither the just nor the sinner. For he himself too says: It is better, if the Spirit of God so wills, to suffer doing good than doing evil (1 Pet 3:17). When, therefore, by the will of the Spirit of God those doing good suffer, the just are not spared; but when those doing evil, sinners are not spared: yet both happen according to the will of him who says, I will spare neither the just nor the sinner—scourging the one as a son, punishing the other as impious.

21. Behold, I have shown, as far as I could, that we do not worship a God dwelling from eternity in darkness, but him who is light, and there is no darkness in him (See 1 Jn 1:5), and who in himself dwells in inaccessible light (See 1 Tim 6:16), of which eternal light the brightness is the coeternal Wisdom (Wis 7:26). Nor a marveler at an unforeseen light, but the creator of the light made, that it might subsist; the approver of it, that it might remain. Nor ignorant of the future, but the commander of a precept and the condemner of an offense, so that, by a vengeance justly pronounced against disobedience, he might restrain the present and terrify those to come. Nor improvident, seeking by not knowing, but judging by asking. Nor envious and fearful, but justly forbidding the transgressor from the eternal life which is given to the justly obedient. Nor desirous of blood and fat, but, sacrifices suited to a carnal people being imposed, promising through certain figures the true sacrifice. Nor jealous with an envious disturbance, but with a tranquil goodness, lest the soul, owing chastity to the one God, be defiled, corrupted and prostituted through many false ones. Nor, with an anger as it were human, raging in turmoil, but, with another, divine anger, severely repaying what is just—which is named anger, by a certain usage of speech, not on account of a lust for avenging, but on account of the vigor of judging. Nor slaying thousands of men for light or no offenses, but, by a most equitable examination, through the temporal deaths of mortals, imposing on peoples the usefulness of fearing him. Nor, with no discernment, in blind confusion punishing the just and sinners, but distributing to the just a healthful reproof for the sake of perfection, but to sinners due severity for the sake of equity. Whence it appears, Manicheans, that you have been deceived by your suspicions, when, by understanding our Scriptures badly, or by experiencing bad interpreters, you believe false things about the Catholics; and thus, having abandoned sound doctrine, turned to sacrilegious fables, and being too perverse and estranged from the fellowship of the saints, you are unwilling to be corrected even from the New Testament, whence we bring forth such things as you accuse in the Old. Whence it comes that against you, as against the pagans, we are compelled to defend both Testaments.

22. But suppose someone utterly carnal, so doting as to worship God—not such as we worship, who is one and true, but such as you say we worship, who has been feigned by your slanders or suspicions: does not even this man worship a better one than you? For I ask, attend and open whatever eyes you have—for there is no need of great sharpness of wit, that what I shall say may be perceived; I call upon all, prudent and imprudent: hear, attend, judge. For how much better would it have been that your god had dwelt from eternity in darkness than that he should have plunged into darkness a light coeternal with himself and akin to him? How much better that he should marvel at and praise a new light arisen for him to put the darkness to flight, than that he should be unable to avoid old darkness rushing upon him, except by his own light being darkened? Unhappy, if disturbed; cruel, if he did this secure. For surely it were better that he should see a light made by himself, and marvel at it as good, than that he should make evil a light begotten of himself, which so repelled from him the hostile darkness that it became hostile to him. For this will be imputed as fault to those relics to be condemned in the globe—that they allowed themselves to stray from their former luminous nature, and stood forth as enemies of the holy light: which, before it befell them, from eternity, if they did not know this would be theirs, they suffered the eternal darkness of ignorance; but if they did know, the eternal darkness of fear. Behold, truly a part and substance of your god dwelt from eternity in its own darkness; nor afterward did it marvel at a new light, but ran into other, alien darkness, which it always feared. Further, that very God, whose part it was, if he feared so great an evil to come for that same part of his, the darkness of fear too had seized even him; but if he did not know this would be, he was blinded by the darkness of ignorance; but if he knew this would be his part's, and did not fear, the darkness of so great cruelty is worse than that either of ignorance or of fear: for your god did not have what the Apostle so praises in the very flesh which you most insanely believe made not by God but by Hyle: If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it (1 Cor 12:26). But we do not accuse: he foreknew, feared, grieved, but had nothing he could do. In these darknesses, then, of his own misery he dwelt from eternity; nor afterward did he marvel at a new light, which would put the darkness to flight from him, but experienced, to the great evil of his light, other darkness, which he always feared. How much better that—I will not say he should give a precept like a god, but should receive a precept like a man, which he would keep to his own good, despise to his own evil, yet in either motion of mind use free will—rather than that, pressed by an inevitable necessity, against his will, he should be forced to the darkening of his light? For it would surely have been much better that he should give a precept to a human nature which he did not know would sin, than that, pressed by necessity, he should compel his own divine nature to sin. Wake up, and tell us how he conquers darkness, whom necessity conquers. This was already with him a greater enemy, by which, conquered and commanded, he fought with the lesser. How much better that he should not know whither Adam had fled from his face, than that he himself should have nowhere to flee, first from the face of hard and dire necessity, and afterward from the face of the diverse and adverse nation? How much better that he should envy the human nature a blessed life, than that he should give his own divine nature over to misery: that he should desire the blood and fat of sacrifices, rather than that he himself should so often be even slain for idols, mingled with the fat and blood of all victims: that he should be troubled with jealousy, if those sacrifices were offered to other gods too, rather than that he himself, bound not only in all fruits but even in all flesh, should be offered through all altars to all demons? How much better that he, moved and troubled even with a human indignation, should be angry at sinners, both his own and strangers, than that he himself should be troubled not only in all the angry, but even in all the fearful, defiled in all sinners, punished in all the condemned; everywhere bound out of that part of his which, innocent, he himself condemned to such disgrace, that through it he might conquer what he feared; he himself too condemned under so deadly a necessity, that the part of him condemned could pardon him, if, since he is now wretched, he were at least humble? But as it is, who could endure that God be reproached by you for being angry at his own and strangers when they sin, when the god you feign condemns in the globe his own members, which, compelled, he compelled to go into the jaws of sin? Which indeed, when he does it, as you say, he will not have anger. But I marvel if he will have the brow to inflict, as it were, vengeance upon those from whom he ought to ask pardon, and to say: "I beg you, pardon, you are my members; when could I have done this to you, except conquered by necessity? You yourselves know that, when I sent you here, a dreadful enemy had burst out; but that I now bind you here, I fear lest he burst out again." Now surely you confess even this, that it is much better to kill thousands of men by a temporal death for no or a light fault, than both to hand over his own members—that is, the members of God, the substance of God, and plainly God—into the abyss of sin, and to condemn them by the binding of everlasting punishment. For if those members had free choice of sinning or not sinning—although, of the substance of God, which is truly the substance of God and on this account utterly immutable, how this could be said is not found. For God can in no way sin, as he cannot deny himself (See 2 Tim 2:13); but a man can sin, and deny God; yet if he does not wish, he does not do it: if, then, those members of your god, like a human and rational soul, had, as I said, free choice of will to sin or not sin, perhaps they would rightly be punished for grave crimes with that punishment of the globe; but as it is, you cannot say that those particles had freedom of will, which the whole god himself did not have: because, if he did not send them into sin, the whole, overrun by the nation of darkness, would be compelled to sin; but if they could not be compelled, he sinned when he sent them where they could be compelled; and therefore he himself is rather worthy of that as it were parricidal sack, who did this by free command, than they who, by obeying, went there where they lost free choice of living rightly. But if even he could be compelled to sin, when overrun and possessed, unless he had provided for himself first by the disgrace, then by the punishment, of his own part, then there was no free will in your god, nor in his parts: let him not feign himself a judge, but acknowledge himself guilty; not because he suffered what he did not wish, but because he pretends to repay just things, condemning those whom he knows to have suffered evil rather than done it: which he pretends only to this end, lest he be found conquered; as though it profited any wretch to be called happy or fortunate. Surely even this was better, that your god, without any examination of equity, should spare men neither just nor sinners (which Faustus, understanding nothing, set last in his reproach of our God), than that he should so rage against his own members: so that it is too little that he offered them to the enemies to be inexpiably poisoned, unless he also accuses them with the false charge of iniquity. Which he therefore rightly says hang under so monstrous and endless a punishment, because they allowed themselves to stray from their former luminous nature, and stood forth as enemies of the holy light. Whence, except because, as he himself says, they were so engrained in the first greed of the princes of darkness that they could not recall their own origin, nor distinguish themselves from the hostile nature? Therefore souls of this kind did no evil themselves, but, innocent, only suffered so great an evil. By whose doing, except that first one's, who commanded that they should proceed from him into so great an evil? They experienced, then, a worse father than enemy. For the father sent them into so great an evil; but the enemy sought them as a good, desiring to enjoy, not to harm: the one knowingly harmed, the other unknowingly. But the weak and needy god could not provide for himself otherwise, first against the wicked enemy, and afterward against the one shut up. Let him, then, at least not accuse those by whose obedience he is safe, by whose death he is secure. For if he was compelled to fight, was he compelled to slander too? For when they allowed themselves to stray from their former luminous nature and stood forth as enemies of the holy light, they were surely compelled to this by the enemy; whom if they were unable to resist, innocent they are condemned; but if they were able, and were unwilling, why do you still so fabulously introduce a nature of evil, when the origin of sin is from the will itself? For this they did surely by their own fault, not by an alien force, in that, when they were able to resist evil, they were unwilling. For since, if they did so, they would do well, but if they did not, they would sin grievously and monstrously: if they were able and did not, they surely were unwilling. If, then, they were unwilling, it is a fault of will, not of necessity. From the will, therefore, is the beginning of sin; but whence the beginning of sin, thence the beginning of evil, whether of doing against a just precept, or of suffering according to a just judgment. Accordingly there is no cause why, seeking whence evil is, you should have rushed into so great an evil of this error, as to call a nature abounding in so many goods a nature of evil, and to set in the nature of the highest good, before the commingling of a nature of evil, the horrendous evil of necessity. For of this error of yours too the cause is pride, which you will not have, if you do not wish; but you, while you wish to defend in some way that into which you have rushed, take away the origin of sin from the choice of the will, and set it in a vain and false fable of the nature of evil. And on this account it remains that you say that even those souls to be condemned in the horrible globe by an eternal binding stood forth as enemies of the holy light not by will but by necessity; and you constitute such a god as your judge, with whom you can profit nothing for those whose cause, with necessity demonstrated, you defend; and such a king, from whom you cannot obtain pardon for your brethren, his sons and members, whose enmities against you and himself you declare to have arisen not by will but by necessity. O most monstrous cruelty!—except that you turn to his defense, to excuse him too, that he does this by necessity. If, then, you could find another judge, who, free from the chain of necessity, would stand forth as a moderator of equity, he would surely not fix this one outside the globe, but shut him up within, together with the terrible enemy himself. For why should he not justly be first for the punishment of condemnation, who is first for the crime of necessity? How much better, then, would you choose, in comparison with the worse, a god—not such as we worship, but such as you either feign or suppose us to worship—who, without any examination of equity, without any distinction of condemnation and discipline, would spare neither his servants, neither the just nor the sinner, rather than that he should not spare his own members, whether innocent, if necessity is no crime, or, by obeying him, made guilty, if necessity too is a crime: so that they should be condemned forever by him, with whom they ought either to have been absolved together, if after the victory freedom revived, or to have been condemned together, if even after the victory necessity at least availed so much that equity too availed something. But as you feign a god—not that true and highest one whom we worship, but some other false one, I know not whom, whom you either judge or slander us as worshiping, who yet is himself too much better than your god (for both do not exist, and both are feigned by you, but you feign better the one you accuse as ours than the one you adore as yours).

23. So too you reproach the Patriarchs and Prophets not such as they are honored by us, but such as, not understanding our books, you have feigned in malevolent vanity: yet, even supposing them such as you suspect them to have been, it is too little if I say they are better than your Elect, who keep all the commandments of Mani, unless I also show that they are better than your very god—which I will not undertake to demonstrate, unless I first defend our holy fathers the Patriarchs and Prophets from your accusations, with the Lord helping me, against carnal hearts, by clear reasoning. And to you indeed, Manicheans, it would suffice so to reply that we should teach that even the vices you think ours are to be preferred to the praises of yours, adding, to the heap of your confusion, that even your god is found far worse than the men such as you boast our fathers to have been. So, then, as I said, it would suffice to reply to you: but since some, even apart from your empty talk, are stirred of their own accord, comparing the life of the Prophets in the Old Testament with the life of the Apostles in the New, and unable to discern the custom of that time in which the promise was veiled from the custom of this time in which the promise is revealed—to these I am the more compelled to reply, who either dare to prefer their own temperance to the Prophets, or seek for their wickedness patronage from the Prophets.

24. On this matter I say this first: that of those men not only the tongue but also the life was prophetic; and that the whole of that kingdom of the Hebrew nation was a certain great prophet, because the prophet of a certain great one. Wherefore, as far as concerns those who there were learned in heart in the wisdom of God, the prophecy of the coming Christ and of the Church is to be searched out not only in the things they said, but also in the things they did; but as far as concerns the rest, and together all the men of that nation, in the things that were done divinely in them or about them. For all those things, as the Apostle says, were figures of us (1 Cor 10:6).

25. But these people, in certain deeds from whose loftiness they are far removed, reproach as it were the lust of the Prophets, just as certain sacrilegious pagans too reproach as it were the foolishness, or rather the madness, of Christ, because at a season of the year unsuited to it he sought fruit on a tree (See Mt 21:18–21); or as a disposition of a certain childish silliness, that with head bowed he wrote with his finger on the ground, and, when he had answered the men questioning him, began again to do this (See Jn 8). For they have no understanding, nor do they perceive that in great souls certain virtues are most like the vices of little ones—by some appearance, but by no comparison of equity. And those who reproach these things in great men are like ignorant boys in school, who, when they have learned, as a great thing, that a verb of the singular number must be rendered to a noun of the singular number, reproach the most learned author of the Latin tongue, because he said, Pars in frusta secant ("Part cut into pieces") (See Virgil, Aeneid 1.212). For he ought, they say, to have said secat. And because they know it is called religio, they blame him because with a doubled letter he said, relligione patrum (See Virgil, Aeneid 2.715). Whence it might perhaps not absurdly be said that, in their own kind, by as much as the figures and metaplasms of the learned are distant from the solecisms and barbarisms of the ignorant, by so much are the figured deeds of the Prophets distant from the lustful sins of the wicked: and on this account, just as a boy reproached for a barbarism, if he wished to defend himself by Virgil's metaplasm, would be beaten with ferules, so whoever, having wallowed with the handmaid of his own wife, should take up Abraham's deed—that he begot offspring from Hagar—as an example for his defense, would, would that he were corrected, not indeed with ferules, but at least with cudgels, lest with the other adulterers he be punished with eternal punishment. Those things indeed are least, but these are great; nor is the likeness drawn to this end, that a figure should be equated with a sacrament, and a solecism with adultery: yet by the proportion of each its own kind, what in those certain virtues or vices of speech skill or unskill avails, this in these virtues or vices of morals—though in a far diverse kind—wisdom or unwisdom avails.

26. Wherefore, lest we rush rashly into praising or blaming, accusing or defending, restraining or relaxing, condemning or absolving, seeking or avoiding any things—in all of which sins or right deeds are involved—we ought first to consider what sin is; then to inspect the deeds of the saints, written in the divine books, so that, if we find any sins even of theirs, we may see, by as careful a reasoning as we can, for what usefulness even these were set down in writing and committed to memory. But those things which we find to seem to the foolish or malevolent to be sins which are not, and yet in which no examples of virtues stand out, these too let us consider for what cause they were inserted into those writings, which we healthfully believe were composed for the usefulness of governing the present life and obtaining the future. Further, whatever evidences of righteousness shine in the deeds of the saints, no one even of the ignorant doubts they ought to have been written. There can, then, be a question about those things which can seem either written in vain, if neither right deeds appear nor are they sins; or even perniciously, if they are convicted of being sins, lest they avail for imitation—whether they are not reproached in the books themselves, and so can even be thought not to be sins; or are reproached there too, but are committed under an easy hope of pardon, because they are found even in the saints.

27. Sin, then, is something done or said or desired against the eternal law. But the eternal law is the divine reason or the will of God, commanding that the natural order be preserved, forbidding that it be disturbed. What, then, the natural order in man is, must be asked. For man consists of soul and body: but so does the beast. But it is doubtful to no one that the soul is, by the natural order, to be set before the body. But in the soul of man there is reason, which is not in the beast. Accordingly, just as the soul is set before the body, so the reason of the soul itself is set, by the law of nature, before its other parts, which beasts too have; and in reason itself, which is partly contemplative, partly active, doubtless contemplation excels. For in this is the image of God, by which through faith we are reformed unto the vision. The rational action, then, ought to obey the rational contemplation, whether commanding through faith, as it is while we are pilgrims away from the Lord (See 2 Cor 5:6), or through vision, which will be when we shall be like him, since we shall see him as he is (See 1 Jn 3:2), made, even in a spiritual body, by his grace equal to his angels (See Mt 22:30), having received the first robe of immortality and incorruption, with which this mortal and corruptible of ours will be clothed, that death may be absorbed into victory (1 Cor 15:53–54), righteousness being perfected through grace. For the holy and sublime angels too have their contemplation and action; for they command themselves to do that which he whom they contemplate commands, by whose eternal command they freely—because sweetly—serve: but we, whose body is dead on account of sin, before God gives life even to our mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in us (See Rom 8:10–11), according to the small measure of our weakness, live justly according to the eternal law by which the natural order is preserved, if we live by faith unfeigned, which works through love (See Gal 5:6): having in a good conscience the hope laid up in the heavens of immortality and incorruption, and of that righteousness to be perfected even unto a certain ineffably most sweet fullness, which in this pilgrimage must be hungered and thirsted for, as long as we walk by faith, not by vision (See 2 Cor 5:7).

28. Wherefore the action of man, serving the faith that serves God, bridles all mortal delights and restrains them to the natural measure, setting better things before lower by an ordered love. For if nothing unlawful delighted, no one would sin. He sins, then, who relaxes rather than bridles the delight of the unlawful. But the unlawful is what that law forbids by which the natural order is preserved. But whether there is any rational creature whom nothing unlawful can delight is a great question. If there is, man was not made in that class, nor that angelic nature which did not stand in the truth: but in that class these rational beings were made, that there should be in them the possibility of bridling delight from the unlawful, which, by not bridling, they sinned. Great, then, is even the human creature, since through it that possibility is restored by which, had it willed, it would not have fallen. Great, then, is the Lord, and greatly to be praised (See Ps 48:2 (47:2)), who created it. For he created also the lower creatures, which cannot sin; he created also the better, which will not sin. For the bestial nature does not sin, because it does nothing against the eternal law, to which it is so subject that it cannot be a partaker of it. Again, the sublime angelic nature does not sin, because it is so a partaker of the eternal law that God alone delights it, to whose will it submits without any experience of temptation. But man, whose life on earth is, on account of sin, a temptation (See Job 7:1), let him subject to himself what he has in common with beasts; let him subject to God what he has in common with the angels: until, with righteousness and immortality perfected and received, he be exalted above the former and made equal to the latter.

29. But mortal delights, unto the restoring or guarding of this mortal health, whether of each man or of the human race itself, are either to be excited or relaxed: beyond that, if they have slipped, and have carried off the man not governing himself against the reason of temperance, they will surely be unlawful and base lusts, and worthy to be amended by pains. But if they so plunge even the disturbed ruler into so great an abyss of lost habit that—either, believing they will go unpunished, he neglects the medicine of confession and penance, by which, corrected, he might emerge; or, by a worse death of the heart, applies to them a blasphemous patronage of defense against that eternal law of providence, and so ends his last day—that irreprehensible law judges him worthy now not of amendment, but of condemnation.

30. The eternal law, then, being consulted, which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed, let us see what father Abraham sinned—that is, what he did against this law—in those things which Faustus objected as great crimes. "Burning," he says, "with an insane desire of having offspring, and by no means believing God, who had already promised him this from Sarah his wife, he wallowed with a concubine." But Faustus, blinded by an insane desire of accusing, both betrayed the wickedness of his heresy and, unknowing and erring, praised Abraham's intercourse. For just as the eternal law—that is, the will of God, founder of all creatures, providing for the natural order to be preserved, not that lust be served unto satiety, but that the safety of the race be looked to—allows the delight of mortal flesh, under the dominion of reason, to be relaxed unto intercourse only for the propagating of offspring: so, on the contrary, the perverse law of the Manicheans, lest their god, whom they bewail as bound in all seeds, be more tightly bound in the conception of a woman, commands that offspring above all be avoided by those having intercourse, so that their god may rather be poured out by a base lapse than bound by a cruel knot. Not, then, was Abraham burning with an insane desire of having offspring, but the Manichean was raving with an insane vanity of avoiding offspring. Accordingly, he, keeping the order of nature, did nothing by human intercourse but that a man should be born: this man, observing the perversity of his fable, feared nothing in any intercourse but that his god should be taken captive.

31. But where Faustus, in Abraham's deed, finds fault as it were with the wife's connivance, there, with an evil mind and intention of reproaching, yet unknowing and unwilling, he praises both. For neither did she mingle her connivance with her husband's wickedness, so that he might satiate his lust with a base and unlawful pleasure: but she too, willing sons by the natural order, and knowing herself barren, claimed the fertility of the handmaid's womb for the use of her own right, by a lawful power; not yielding to a husband lusting, but commanding one obeying (See Gen 16:2–4). Nor was this by a disordered pride: for who does not know that a wife ought to serve her husband as her lord? But as to what concerns the members of the body, by which the sex itself is distinguished, the Apostle says: Likewise the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife (1 Cor 7:4): so that, while in the other acts pertaining to human peace the woman owes service to the man, in this one thing, by which both sexes are distinguished by the carnal lot, and joined by carnal commingling, they have a like power over each other, the husband over the wife, and the wife over the husband. The offspring, then, which Sarah could not have from herself, she wished to have from the handmaid: yet from the same seed from which she ought to have had it from herself too, if she could. A woman would never do this, if she were held by carnal concupiscence in her husband's body; for she would rather be jealous of the concubine, not make her a mother: but as it is, the will to propagate in this way was devout for this reason, that the will to have intercourse was not lustful.

32. That indeed cannot be defended, if Abraham, as Faustus objected, by no means believing God, who had already promised him offspring from Sarah, wished to receive it from Hagar. But it is most openly false: God had not yet promised this. Let those who wish review the earlier parts of that Scripture; they will find that to Abraham's seed land had already been promised, and the abundance of an innumerable multitude (See Gen 12:3), yet it had not yet been made plain how the propagation of that seed would be—whether from the flesh of Abraham, if he begot from himself, or from the will, if perhaps he adopted someone: then, if from his own flesh, whether from Sarah or from another altogether, had not yet been made manifest. Let them read, I say, who wish, and they will find Faustus either imprudently deceived or impudently deceiving. And so Abraham, when he saw that sons were not born to him, and yet held the promise made to his seed, first thought of adoption. This is shown by the fact that, speaking with God, he says of his home-born servant, This one will be my heir—as if to say: Since you have given me no seed from myself, fulfill in this one what you promised to my seed. For if anyone's seed were called only what was born from his flesh, the Apostle would not call us the seed of Abraham (See Gal 3:29), who surely do not draw the origin of flesh from him, but by imitation of faith were made his seed, believing in Christ, whose flesh was propagated from his flesh. Then, therefore, Abraham heard from the Lord: This one will not be your heir; but he who comes out of your womb, he will be your heir (Gen 15:3–4). Already then, the thought of adoption removed, since Abraham hoped for seed from himself, it remained uncertain whether from Sarah or from another: which God wished to hide from him, until first, from the handmaid, the Old Testament should be figured. What wonder, then, if Abraham, seeing his wife barren, desiring for herself offspring which she could not bear, that it should come from her own maidservant and from her husband, did not yield to his own carnal desire, but obeyed the conjugal power; believing that Sarah wished this by the nod of God, who had already promised him an heir from himself, but had not foretold from what woman? In vain, then, did Faustus insanely leap to object this crime, arguing unfaithful Abraham unfaithfully. For the rest, by the blindness of not believing, he was not able to understand; but this, by the lust of slandering, he neglected even to read.

33. But when, calling a just and faithful man a most infamous huckster of his own marriage, he asserts that for the sake of avarice and the belly he sold for intercourse, to two kings, Abimelech and Pharaoh, at different times, Sarah his wife, lying that she was his sister, because she was most beautiful—he separates honesty from baseness not with a truthful mouth, but with a slanderous mouth turns the whole into a crime. For this deed of Abraham seems like pandering, but only to those unable, by the light of that eternal law, to discern right deeds from sins: to whom constancy too can seem obstinacy, and the virtue of confidence be thought the vice of audacity, and whatever similar things are objected against men as it were not acting rightly, by those not discerning rightly. For neither did Abraham consent to his wife's wickedness, and sell her adultery: but just as she did not permit her handmaid to her husband's lust, but offered her of her own accord for the office of begetting, with the natural order in no way disturbed, where her power lay, commanding rather than yielding to one lusting; so too he, of his chaste spouse, cleaving to him with a chaste heart, of whose mind, where the virtue of modesty dwelt, he in no way doubted, was silent that she was his wife, said she was his sister; lest, himself killed, she should be possessed as a captive by foreigners and impious men; sure of his God that he would allow her to suffer nothing base and wicked. Nor did faith and hope deceive him: for Pharaoh, terrified by portents, and afflicted by many evils on her account, when he learned divinely that she was his wife, restored her unharmed with honor; and Abimelech, admonished and instructed by a dream, did likewise (Gen 12; 20).

34. Some indeed—not slanderous and reviling, like Faustus, but paying due honor to those same books which this man either by not understanding reproaches, or by reproaching does not understand—when they considered this deed of Abraham, it seemed to them that he somewhat failed and wavered from the firmness of faith, and, through fear of death, denied his wife as Peter did the Lord (See Mt 26:70–74). But if it were necessary to understand these things thus, I would acknowledge the man's sin; nor would I therefore judge all his merits deleted and blotted out, just as not those of that apostle: although the fault is not equal, to deny a wife and to deny the Savior. But as it is, since I have what I may understand, so as not to understand this, I am compelled by no cause to slip by rashness into reproaching one whom no one convicts of having slipped, through fear, into lying. For neither, asked whether she was his wife, did he answer that she was not: but when he was asked what that woman was to him, he indicated a sister, did not deny a wife; he was silent about something true, he did not say something false.

35. Or are we so foolish as here to follow Faustus, who says he lied that she was his sister—as though he had learned Sarah's lineage from elsewhere, since holy Scripture has not disclosed it? I think it just that, in a matter which Abraham knew but we do not know, we should rather believe the Patriarch speaking what he knows than the Manichean slandering what he does not know. Since, then, Abraham lived in human affairs at that time when indeed brothers, born from both or from one or the other parent, were no longer permitted to be joined in marriage, but custom, forbidden by no law, by no power, joined the sons of brothers and other blood relatives of a more distant degree of kindred—what wonder if he had his sister as wife, that is, one procreated from the blood of his father? For this very thing he himself said to the king restoring her to him, that she was his sister by his father, not by his mother: where surely he was now compelled by no fear to lie that she was his sister, since the king had learned that she was his wife, and, divinely terrified, was restoring her with honor. But that brothers or sisters are wont among the ancients to be called by a general name "blood relatives," Scripture testifies. For Tobit too says to God, when he prayed before he was joined to his wife: And now, Lord, you know that not for the sake of lust do I take my sister (Tob 8:9 (8:7)): although she was not from the intercourse of the same father, nor from the same mother's womb, but sprung from the same stock of kindred (Tob 6:11; 7:2). And Lot is called the brother of Abraham (See Gen 13:8), though Abraham was his uncle (See Gen 11:31): from which custom of the term even the brothers of the Lord are called in the Gospel—not, surely, those whom the virgin Mary had borne, but all the near kin by his blood relationship (See Mt 12:46).

36. Someone will say: Why did Abraham not rather so presume upon his God as not to fear to confess his wife? For God could both repel from him the death he feared, and keep him safe with his spouse from all ruin in that pilgrimage, so that neither would his wife, however beautiful, be desired by anyone, nor would he himself be killed on her account. God could surely have done this: who would be so mad as to deny it? But if Abraham, when asked, indicated that woman to be his wife, he would commit two things to God to be guarded: his own life, and his spouse's modesty. But it pertains to sound doctrine, when a man has what he may do, not to tempt the Lord his God (See Deut 6:16). For neither could the Savior himself not guard his disciples, to whom yet he says: If they persecute you in one city, flee to another (Mt 10:23). Of which thing he himself gave the example first. For although he had power to lay down his soul, and would not lay it down except when he willed (See Jn 10:18), yet as an infant he fled into Egypt, carried by his parents (See Mt 2:14); and to the feast he went up not openly but secretly, when at other times he spoke openly to the Jews who were angry and listening with a most hostile mind, yet not able to lay hands on him, because his hour had not yet come (See Jn 7:10, 30): not the hour by whose necessity he would be compelled to die, but the hour by whose opportunity he would deign to be slain. He, then, who by teaching openly, and rebuking, and yet not allowing the rage of his enemies to avail anything against him, demonstrated the power of God; yet, by fleeing and hiding, instructed the weakness of man, that he should not dare to tempt God, when he has what he may do to escape what he ought to avoid. For neither had the apostle Paul despaired of divine help and protection, and lost faith, when he was let down through the wall in a basket, to escape the hands of his enemies (See Acts 9:25). Not, then, by not believing in God did he so flee, but, by tempting God, he would have been unwilling so to flee, since he could so flee. Accordingly, when, among strangers, on account of the most excellent beauty of Sarah, both her modesty and her husband's life were in doubt, and he could not guard both, but Abraham could yet guard one of these, that is, his life; lest he tempt his God, he did what he could; but what he could not, he committed to him. He, then, who was unable to hide himself a man, hid himself a husband, lest he be killed; he entrusted his wife to God, lest she be polluted.

37. Although it might be disputed more scrupulously whether that woman's modesty would be violated, even if someone were mingled with her flesh, since she permitted this to be done in her, for her husband's life, and not without his knowledge, but at his command, in no way deserting conjugal fidelity, and not denying the marital power; just as he was not an adulterer when, obeying his wife's power, he consented to beget offspring from a handmaid: but on account of the force of first principles—because a woman is not subjected to intercourse with two living men in the way two women are to one man—we take that much more truly and honestly: that father Abraham neither tempted God, when he provided for his life as much as a man could, and hoped in God, to whom he commended his spouse's modesty.

38. But now, in this deed done and set in the divine books and faithfully narrated, who would not delight to search out also the prophetic deed, and to knock at the door of the sacrament with devout faith and zeal, that the Lord may open and show who was then figured in that man, and whose wife she is who in this pilgrimage and among foreigners is not allowed to be polluted and stained, that she may be to her husband without spot or wrinkle? For unto the glory of Christ the Church lives rightly, so that her beauty is an honor to her husband, just as Abraham was honored among foreigners on account of Sarah's beauty: and to her very self, to whom it is said in the Song of Songs, O beautiful among women! (Song 1:8 (1:7)), by the merit of her very beauty kings offer gifts; just as King Abimelech offered to Sarah, marveling more in her at the comeliness of form which he could love and could not violate. For the holy Church too is, in secret, the wife of the Lord Jesus Christ. For secretly, and within, in a hidden spiritual secret, the human soul cleaves to the Word of God, so that the two are one flesh: which great sacrament of marriage the Apostle commends in Christ and in the Church (See Eph 5:31–32). Accordingly, the earthly kingdom of this world, whose figure those kings bore who were not permitted to pollute Sarah, has not experienced nor found the Church the spouse of Christ—that is, the Church faithfully subject to him and cleaving to him as to her husband, her first principle—except when it tried to violate her, and yielded to the divine testimony through the faith of the martyrs, and honored, in its later kings, with a gift, her whom in its earlier ones it could not subject to its assault. For what was then figured in that same king, the earlier and the later, this in this kingdom is fulfilled in its earlier and later kings.

39. But when the Church is said to be the sister of Christ by the father, not by the mother, a kinship is commended not of the earthly generation which will be made void, but of the heavenly grace which will remain forever. According to which grace we shall not be a mortal race, having received power to be called sons of God and to be so (See 1 Jn 3:1). For this grace we received not from the Synagogue, the mother of Christ according to the flesh, but from God the Father. But this earthly kinship, which generates temporally unto death, Christ taught us, calling us into another life where no one dies, to deny, not to confess, when he says to his disciples: Call no one your father on earth; for one is your Father who is in heaven (Mt 23:9). Of which thing he gave an example, when he himself said: Who is my mother, or who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand over his disciples, he said: These are my brothers. And lest anyone in this term should think of earthly kinship, he added: And whoever does the will of my Father, he is my brother, and mother, and sister (Mt 12:48–50): as if to say: I name this kinship from God the Father, not from the Synagogue the mother. For I now call unto eternal life, where I was immortally born; not unto the temporal life, whence, that I might call, I was made mortal.

40. As for the fact, then, that whose wife the Church is, is hidden from foreigners, but whose sister she is, is not concealed—this cause for the present readily occurs: because it is hidden and difficult to understand how the human soul is coupled with the Word of God, or mingled, or whatever better and more fitting can be said, since that is God, this a creature. For according to this they are called bridegroom and bride, or husband and wife, Christ and the Church. But by what kinship Christ and all the saints are brothers, by divine grace, not by earthly blood relationship—that is, by the father, not by the mother—is both more expressibly said and more capably heard. For all the saints too are among themselves brothers by the same grace: but the bridegroom of the fellowship of the rest none of them is. Accordingly, foreigners much more easily and readily believed Christ, though of most excellent righteousness and wisdom, yet to be a man—not falsely, indeed, that he was a man; but how he was also God they did not know. Hence Jeremiah too: And he is a man, he says, and who will know him? (Jer 17:9) "And he is a man"; because it is disclosed that he is a brother. "And who will know him?"; because it is hidden that he is a bridegroom. Let these things, concerning father Abraham, suffice to have been said against the most impudent and most ignorant and most slanderous voice of Faustus.

41. But Lot, his kinsman, just and hospitable in Sodom, and pure and unstained from all contamination of the Sodomites, deserved to escape safe from that conflagration which was a likeness of the future judgment; bearing the type of the body of Christ, which in all the saints now too groans among the iniquitous and impious, with whose deeds it does not consent, and from whose commingling it will be freed at the end of the world, with those condemned to the punishment of eternal fire. But as another kind of men was figured in his wife—namely, of those who, called by the grace of God, look back; not like Paul, who forgets the things that are behind, and stretches forward to the things that are before (See Phil 3:13). Whence the Lord himself says: No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven (Lk 9:62). Nor was that example passed over by which he might, as it were, season us with salt, that we should not, foolish, neglect, but, prudent, beware this evil. Whence she too, to admonish this, was turned into a pillar of salt. For when he commanded that each should snatch himself, by a most persevering intention toward the things before, from the things that are behind, he said, Remember Lot's wife (Lk 17:32). So too in Lot himself, when his daughters lay with him, not that which was figured when he was freed from Sodom, but something else, was figured. For then that same Lot seems to have borne the person of the future Law, which certain ones procreated from it and set under the Law, by understanding it badly, in a manner make drunk, and, by not using it lawfully, bring forth works of unbelief. For the Law is good, says the Apostle, if anyone uses it lawfully (1 Tim 1:8).

42. Nor yet do we therefore justify this deed, whether of Lot himself or of his daughters, because it signified something that foretold the future perversity of certain people. For the daughters intended one thing in doing this, God who permitted it to be done another, that even from it he might demonstrate something, his right judgment remaining over the sin of the men then present, and his providence watching for the signification of things to come. Accordingly, that deed, when it is narrated in holy Scripture, is prophecy; but when it is considered in the life of those who committed it, it is wickedness.

43. Nor again is the matter worthy of so great a reproach and accusation as Faustus, an enemy and blind, vomited upon it. For that eternal law is consulted, which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed, and it judges of this deed not as if he had burned for his daughters with a nefarious lust, to enjoy their incestuous body, or to have them as wives; nor of those women, as if they had blazed for the flesh of their own father with an execrable love. For the reason of justice considers not only what was done, but also why it was done, so as to weigh deeds, hanging upon their causes, on the balance of equity. Since, then, those women sought offspring for the preservation of the race—which in them was surely a human and natural affection—and did not believe they could find other men, the world being as it were burned up by that conflagration (for they could not discern how far that fire had raged), they wished to mingle with their father. They ought rather never to have been mothers than to have so used their father: yet it makes a great difference that they used this cause, than if they had used the concupiscence of so deadly a pleasure.

44. But they felt their father so to shudder at that deed that they did not believe they would accomplish it, unless they procured his ignorance. For, as it is written, they made him drunk, and mingled with him as he knew not (See Gen 19). Wherefore he is indeed to be blamed, yet not as much as that incest, but as much as that drunkenness deserves. For this too the eternal law condemns; because it admits food and drink to the natural order only by the favor of preserving health. Although, then, between a drunkard and one drunk there is a great difference—for neither is a drunkard always drunk, nor is whoever is sometimes drunk consequently a drunkard—yet in a just man the cause of this very thing, if not of drunkenness as a habit, at least of being drunk, must be sought. For what at last compelled him to consent or to trust his daughters mixing frequent wines for him, or perhaps offering them frequently unmixed? Or did he wish so to console his daughters, feigning excessive sorrow, that the grief of that bereavement and maternal mourning might be put to flight from the thought of a drunken mind, supposing that they too drank as much, while by some trick they acted so as not to drink? But how it would befit a just man to apply such a consolation to his sorrowing ones, we do not see. Or could they, by some most wicked Sodomite art, even with a few cups so make their father drunk that they committed that sin with one ignorant, or rather upon one ignorant? But it is a wonder if divine Scripture would have kept this silent, or if God would allow his servant to suffer it without some fault of his will.

45. We, nevertheless, defend the holy Scriptures, not the sins of men. But we are not so busy about the clearing of this deed as though our God either commanded it to be done, or approved it done; or as though just men are so called in those books that, if they wished to sin, they could not. Since, then, in the writings which these people reproach, God bore no testimony of righteousness to this deed, with what madness of rashness do they strive on this account to accuse those writings, when in other places of them these things are found most openly forbidden by divine precepts? Whence in that deed done, narrated concerning the work of Lot's daughters, these things were narrated, not praised. But some things had to be narrated with the judgment of God pronounced, some with it unspoken: so that, when it is brought forth what God judged thereof, our ignorance may be instructed; but when it is unspoken, either our skill may be exercised, that we may recall what we learned elsewhere, or our sloth may be shaken off, that we may inquire into what we do not yet know. God, then, who knows how to make good works even out of men's evil work, propagated from that seed the nations he willed, and did not condemn his Scriptures on account of men's sins. For he disclosed these things, did not do them; and he admonished them to be avoided, did not set them forth to be imitated.

46. With marvelous impudence indeed Faustus accused Isaac too, the son of Abraham, that he feigned Rebecca, who was his wife, to be his sister (See Gen 26:7). For Rebecca's lineage is not kept silent, and it is manifest that she was his sister by a most well-known kinship (See Gen 24). But that he was silent that she was his wife—what wonder, or what small thing, if he imitated his father; since he is defended by the same justice by which his father was found uncharged on a like objection? For the things, then, which, as far as concerns this matter, we said for Abraham against the slandering Faustus, the same avail also for Isaac his son (See Gen 12; 20); which it is not difficult to review—unless perhaps some studious person should ask in what sacrament of figure it is to be taken, that the foreign king then knew Rebecca to be the wife of her husband when he saw him playing with her; which he would not have known, unless he so played with his spouse as it would not befit to play with one who was not his spouse. When holy married people do this, they do it not idly, but prudently: for they descend in a manner to the weakness of the female sex, that they may say or do something with caressing cheerfulness; not enervating, but tempering, manly sternness: which yet, in him who says or does it to one who is not his wife, is base. But this I would say, which pertains to the manners of humanity, lest anyone, hard and without affection, object as a crime to a holy man that he played with his spouse. For such inhuman men, if they see some grave man chattering some playful thing even to little children, by which he may soothe their milky sense with affable and nurturing ease, reproach him as doting: forgetting whence they grew, or ungrateful that they grew. But what, in the sacrament of Christ and the Church, that so great a Patriarch played with his spouse, and that marriage was thence recognized, may mean—he surely sees, lest by erring he sin against the Church, who diligently beholds in the holy Scriptures the secret of her husband: and he finds that he hid his majesty a little, by which in the form of God he is equal to the Father, in the form of a servant (See Phil 2:6–7), that human weakness might be able to grasp him, and in that manner might fittingly suit himself to his spouse. For what is absurd—nay, what not fittingly accommodated to the foretelling of things to come—if a prophet of God played something carnal, that the affection of his wife might grasp him; when the very Word of God was made flesh, that it might dwell among us (See Jn 1:14)?

47. But now, as for his son Jacob, that four wives are objected to him as a vast crime (See Gen 29; 30), it is cleared by a general preface. For when it was the custom, it was not a crime: and now it is therefore a crime, because it is not the custom. For some sins are against nature, some against custom, some against precepts. Since these things are so, what crime at last is it that is objected to the holy man Jacob concerning several wives held at once? If you consult nature, he used those women not for the sake of wantoning, but of begetting; if custom, at that time and in those lands this was commonly done; if precept, it was forbidden by no law. But now, why is it a crime, if anyone does this, except because both by morals and by laws it is not permitted? Whoever despises these two, even if he can use several women only for the sake of begetting, yet sins, and violates that very human society to which the propagation of children is necessary. But because men, now that morals and laws are otherwise, cannot be delighted by a multitude of wives except by a magnitude of lust, therefore they err and suppose that many wives could not at all be had, except by the burning of carnal concupiscence and of foul pleasure. For comparing, not others whose virtue of mind they cannot at all know, but, as the Apostle says, themselves with themselves (See 2 Cor 10:12), they do not understand. And because they themselves, even if they have one, approach her, led manfully not by the office of begetting alone, but, conquered by the goad of intercourse, are drawn enervately; they seem to themselves to conjecture truly how much greater a disease of this kind others are captivated by, through many women, when they see that they themselves cannot keep temperance with one.

48. But we ought not so to commit judgment about the morals of holy men to those who do not have this virtue, just as we do not allow the feverish to judge about the sweetness and healthfulness of foods: and we rather prepare for them their nourishment from the sense of the healthy and the precept of the physicians, than from the disposition of their own sickness. Accordingly, if these people wish to receive the health, not of a false and shadowed, but of a true and solid chastity, let them believe the divine Scriptures as medicinal books, that not in vain was so great an honor of sanctity bestowed on certain men even having several wives; unless because it can happen that the mind, commander of the flesh, so prevails by so great a power of temperance that it does not permit the motion of generative delight, implanted in the nature of mortals, to exceed the laws imposed by the providence of begetting. Otherwise these people—slanderous accusers rather than truthful judges—could accuse even the holy Apostles, that they preached the Gospel to so many peoples not from love of begetting sons of eternal life, but from desire of human praise. For those evangelical fathers did not lack illustrious fame throughout all the Churches of Christ, gained by so many tongues praising them: nay rather, so great was it that greater honor and glory ought not to be paid to men by men. This glory in the Church the lost Simon coveted with a perverse will, when, blind, he wished to buy with money what they merited by divine and that gratuitous grace (See Acts 8:18–20). Greedy of this glory is understood to have been the man whom the Lord in the Gospel calls back as he wished to follow him, saying: The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8:20). For he saw that man, darkened by a deceitful pretense and tossed by a windy elation, to have no place of faith where he might receive the teacher of humility inclining himself; because in the discipleship of Christ he sought not his grace, but his own glory. By this love of glory were corrupted those whom the apostle Paul notes, that through envy and contention they announced Christ not chastely: by whose preaching, nevertheless, the Apostle rejoices (See Phil 1:15–18), knowing it can happen that, while they follow the desire of human glory, yet, these things being heard, the faithful are born; not from their envious desire, by which they wished either to be equaled or preferred to the apostolic glory, but through the Gospel, which, even if not chastely, they yet announced; so that out of their evil God might work good: just as it can happen that a man enters intercourse not with the will of begetting, but is carried off by the lust of wantoning; and yet a man is born, a good work of God from the fertility of seeds, not from the baseness of vices. As, then, the holy Apostles took common delight with their hearers admiring their teaching, not from greed of attaining praise, but from love of sowing the truth; so the holy Patriarchs mingled with their wives receiving their seed, not from concupiscence of receiving pleasure, but from providence of propagating succession: and on this account neither did the multitude of peoples make those ambitious, nor the multitude of wives make these lustful. But why do I speak of the men, to whom a most excellent testimony is borne by the divine voice, when it sufficiently shines forth that the very women sought nothing else in intercourse than children? For when they saw themselves by no means bearing, they gave their handmaids to their husband, that they might make them mothers by flesh, themselves becoming mothers by will.

49. For that too which Faustus objected with a most lying accusation—that there was a contest among them as it were four harlots, which should seize him for intercourse—where he read this I do not know, unless perhaps in his own heart as in a book of nefarious deceits, where he himself truly played the harlot, but with that serpent of whom the Apostle feared for the Church, which he desired to present as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ, lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so he should corrupt their minds too, by turning them away from the chastity of Christ (See 2 Cor 11:2–3). For these people are such friends to this serpent that they contend he benefited rather than harmed. He plainly persuaded Faustus, pouring the seeds of falsehood into an adulterated breast, that he should bring forth these ill-conceived slanders with a most unclean mouth, and even commit them to memory with a most audacious pen. For no handmaid snatched the man Jacob from another, no handmaid quarreled over his intercourse with another. There was the more order, therefore, because there was no lust; and the rights of conjugal power were preserved so much the more firmly, as the injury of carnal desire was avoided the more chastely. For in that he is even hired by a wife, there our true assertion is made manifest, there truth itself cries out for itself against the slanders of the Manicheans. For what need was there that the one should hire him, except because it was the other's turn that the husband should go in to her? For he would never have gone to another, unless she had hired him: but surely he was approaching by just turns her of whom he had begotten so many sons, and whom he had obeyed even in begetting from a handmaid, and of whom afterward, not hiring him, he begot. But then Rachel had the night in turn to stay with her husband: then that power was in her hands, about which through the Apostle the voice surely of the New Testament was not silent, saying: Likewise the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife. Therefore she had now agreed with her sister, to whom, made debtor, she transferred him to her own debtor. For by this name the Apostle calls it: Let the husband, he says, render the debt to the wife (1 Cor 7:3–4). To her, then, to whom the husband was debtor, she had now received from her sister what she chose by her will, that she might give to her what she had in her power.

50. But here this man, whom Faustus accuses as unchaste with closed—or rather extinguished—eyes, if he were a slave of concupiscence and not of righteousness, would he not the whole day long be aglow for the pleasure of that night in which he was to lie with the more beautiful—whom surely he loved more, and for whom he had paid the gratuitous labor of twice seven years? When, then, with the day now ended, he was going into her embrace, when would he be turned away from there, if he were such as the Manicheans, understanding nothing, suppose? Would he not, despising the women's agreement, rather go in to his beautiful one, who owed him that very night, not only by the manner of a spouse, but also by the right of the turn? Would he not rather use the marital power himself, since both the wife has not power over her own body, but the husband; and for him at that time the alternation of their service made it so: he would, then, use conjugal power much more conquerably, if he were conquered by desire of beauty. But the women would be found the better, if they contended for conceiving children, while he contended for the pleasure of his own intercourse. And so a most temperate man, and plainly a man, because he so manfully used the women that he was not subject to carnal delight, but lorded over it, attended more to what he owed than to what was owed to him; nor did he wish to abuse his power for his own pleasure, but chose to be a renderer rather than an exactor of that debt. Whence it was consequent that he should render to her whom she to whom it was owed chose to receive it for herself; so that, this agreement and pact of theirs being learned, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly called back from his most beautiful spouse, and called to the less comely one, he neither blazed with anger, nor was clouded with sadness, nor, weakly fawning, busied himself between the two that Rachel should rather render him the night: but, a just husband and a provident father, when he saw them bearing the care of offspring, and himself sought nothing else from intercourse, he judged that he must obey the will of those who desired sons for themselves individually; nothing being diminished for his own, for whom both bore. As if he said: Yield and concede among yourselves, as you wish, which of you is to become a mother: what should I contend for, when, whether born from this side or that, there will be no other father? This modesty, surely, this restraint of concupiscence, and, in the commingling of conjugal bodies, only the appetite of human posterity—Faustus, sharp as he was, would in those writings both understand and praise, were not his talent depraved by a detestable sect, both seeking what to reproach, and reckoning this one honesty of the nuptial agreement, by which males and females are coupled for the sake of procreating children, the greatest crime.

51. Now, the Patriarch's morals defended, and the crime refuted which a nefarious error objected, let us, as freely as we can, search out the secrets of the mysteries, and knock with the piety of faith, that it may be opened to us by the Lord what things these four wives of Jacob figured, of whom two were free, two handmaids. For we see the Apostle, in the free woman and the handmaid whom Abraham had, understand the two Testaments (See Gal 4:22–24): but there, in one and one, what is said appears more easily; here there are two and two. Then there the handmaid's son is disinherited, but here the sons of the handmaids together with the sons of the free women receive the land of promise: whence here, without doubt, something else is signified.

52. For although I judge that the two free wives of Jacob pertain to the New Testament, by which we have been called into freedom, yet they are not two in vain: unless perhaps because (a thing that can be noticed and found in the Scriptures) two lives are preached to us in the body of Christ; one temporal, in which we labor, the other eternal, in which we shall contemplate the delight of God. The former the Lord declared by his passion, the latter by his resurrection. The very names of those women admonish us to this understanding. For they say that Leah is interpreted "Laboring," but Rachel "the Beginning Seen," or "the Word from which the beginning is seen." The action, then, of the human and mortal life, in which we live by faith, doing many laborious works, uncertain with what outcome they come forth unto the usefulness of those for whom we wish to provide, is itself Leah, the first wife of Jacob; and on this account she is mentioned as having weak eyes. For the thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our foresight uncertain (See Wis 9:14). But the hope of the eternal contemplation of God, having a certain and delightful understanding of truth, is itself Rachel: whence she too is said to be of good face and beautiful form. For her every devout and zealous one loves, and for her sake serves the grace of God, by which our sins, even if they were like scarlet, are whitened like snow (See Isa 1:18): for Laban is interpreted "Whitening," whom Jacob served for Rachel's sake (See Gen 29:17, 30). For no one turns, under the grace of the remission of sins, to serve righteousness, except that he may live quietly in the Word from which the beginning is seen, which is God: therefore for Rachel's sake, not for Leah's. For who at last would love, in the works of righteousness, the labor of actions and sufferings? Who would seek that life for its own sake?—just as Jacob did not seek Leah: yet, set under him by night for the use of begetting, he embraced her and experienced her fertility. For the Lord, because she could not be loved for her own sake, first made her to be tolerated, that one might arrive at Rachel, and then commended her on account of her sons. So, indeed, every useful servant of God, set under the grace of the whitening of his sins, what else has he meditated in his conversion, what else borne in his heart, what else loved, than the doctrine of wisdom? Which very many suppose they will attain and receive as soon as they have exercised themselves in the seven precepts of the law which concern the love of neighbor, that no man be harmed—that is: Honor your father and mother, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, You shall not covet your neighbor's property (Exod 20:12–17): which, observed as much as one can, after one has, for the desired and hoped-for most beautiful delight of doctrine, cleaved through various temptations, as through the night of this world, with the endurance of labor, as it were Leah is unexpectedly joined to him for Rachel; and he sustains her in order to arrive at the other, if he loves perseveringly, having received the other seven precepts: as if it were said to him, Serve another seven years for Rachel; that he may be poor in spirit, meek, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker (See Mt 5:3–9). For a man would wish, if it could be, without any endurance of labor—which in acting and suffering must be embraced—to arrive at once at the delights of beautiful and perfect wisdom: but this cannot be in the land of the dying. For this seems to be signified by what was said to Jacob: It is not the custom in our place that the younger marry before the elder (Gen 29:26–27). For not absurdly is she called the elder who is prior in time. But prior, in the right education of man, is the labor of doing the things that are just, than the pleasure of understanding the things that are true.

53. To this avails what is written: You have desired wisdom; keep the commandments, and the Lord will furnish it to you (Sir 1:33 (1:26)). The commandments, surely, pertaining to righteousness: but the righteousness which is from faith, which is engaged amid the uncertainties of temptations, so that, by devoutly believing what it does not yet understand, it may attain also the merit of understanding. For as much as that which I just mentioned to be written avails—You have desired wisdom; keep the commandments; and the Lord will furnish it to you—so much, I judge, this too avails: Unless you believe, you will not understand (Isa 7:9): so that righteousness is shown to pertain to faith, but understanding to wisdom. Accordingly, in those who burn with a vast love of perspicuous truth, the zeal is not to be disapproved, but to be recalled to order, that it may begin from faith, and by good morals strive to arrive where it tends. For in that with which it is engaged there is laborious virtue; but in that which it seeks, luminous wisdom. "What need is there," he says, "to believe what is not shown me manifest? Bring forth some word by which I may see the beginning of all things." For that is what, most of all and first, a rational mind, if it is zealous for the true, blazes for. To whom let it be answered: Beautiful indeed is what you desire, and most worthy to be loved; but first Leah marries, and afterward Rachel. Let this ardor, then, avail to this, that order be not refused, but rather endured; without which one cannot arrive at that which is loved with so great ardor. But when one has arrived, there will be had together, in this world, not only beautiful understanding, but also laborious righteousness. For however keenly and sincerely the immutable good is discerned by mortals, still the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the sense that thinks many things (Wis 9:15). To one, then, we must tend, but on account of this many things must be borne.

54. And so the two wives of Jacob are free: for both are daughters of the remission of sins—that is, of the whitening, which is Laban. Nevertheless, one is loved, and the other tolerated. But she who is tolerated is herself first and more abundantly made fruitful, so that, if not for her own sake, at least for her sons' sake she may be loved. For the labor of the just has its greatest fruit in those whom they beget for the kingdom of God, by preaching the Gospel amid many temptations and tribulations; and those for whom they are in labors more abundant, in stripes beyond measure, in deaths more often (See 2 Cor 11:23), on whose account they have fightings without, fears within (See 2 Cor 7:5), they call their joy and their crown (See Phil 4:1). But these are born to them more easily and copiously from that word of faith by which they preach Christ crucified (See 1 Cor 1:23), and whatever of his humanity is more quickly perceived by human thought, and does not disturb even the weak eyes of Leah. But Rachel, clear of aspect, is beside herself in mind to God (See 2 Cor 5:13), and sees in the beginning the Word, God with God (See Jn 1:1), and wishes to bear, and cannot; for who will declare his generation? (Isa 53:8) Accordingly, the life that befits the zeal of contemplation—so that it may behold those things which are invisible to the flesh, not with the weak eyes of the mind, understood through the things that are made, and may ineffably discern the everlasting power and divinity of God (See Rom 1:20)—wishes to be free from all business, and therefore is barren. For, in striving after the leisure in which the zeal of contemplation grows hot, it is not tempered to the weakness of men, who desire to be helped in their various pressures. But because she too burns with the love of procreating (for she wishes to teach what she knows, and not to journey with envy pining away (See Wis 6:25 (6:23))), she sees her sister abounding in sons by the labor of acting and suffering; and she grieves that men rather run to that virtue by which their weaknesses and necessities are provided for, than to that by which something divine and immutable is learned. This grief seems figured in what is written: And Rachel was jealous of her sister (Gen 30:1). Accordingly, because a liquid and pure understanding of that substance which is not body, and on this account does not pertain to the sense of the flesh, cannot be expressed by words brought forth in the flesh, the doctrine of wisdom chooses to insinuate divine things, to be thought of somehow through any corporeal images and likenesses whatever, rather than to cease from the office of teaching such things: just as Rachel chose to receive children from her husband and her handmaid, rather than to remain altogether without sons. For Bilhah is said to be interpreted "Grown old": this handmaid Rachel had. For from the old life given over to carnal senses corporeal images are stirred up, even when something is heard of the spiritual and immutable substance of the divinity.

55. Leah too receives sons from her handmaid, kindled with love of having more numerous offspring. But we find Zilpah, her handmaid, interpreted "a Gaping Mouth." Wherefore, when in the preaching of the evangelical faith we notice those whose mouth gapes and whose heart does not gape, this is understood as Leah's handmaid. For it is written of certain people: This people honors me with the lips, but their heart is far from me (Isa 29:13). And to such the Apostle says: You who preach that one must not steal, steal; you who say one must not commit adultery, commit adultery (Rom 2:21–22). Nevertheless, that even through this servile condition that free laboring wife of Jacob may receive sons, heirs of the kingdom, therefore the Lord says: What they say, do; but what they do, do not do (Mt 23:3). Whence the apostolic life in the labor of bonds: Whether by occasion, he says, or by truth, Christ is announced, and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice (Phil 1:18): as the handmaid too, bearing, rejoiced over more numerous offspring.

56. But there is a certain offspring of Leah brought forth by the favor of Rachel, when she, having received the mandrake apples from Leah's son, permits her husband, who was to lie with her by the owed night, to lie with her sister. About this kind of fruit I know some opine that, taken as food, it produces fertility in barren women; and on this account they think Rachel insisted in every way that she should receive this from her sister's son, out of desire of bearing: which I would not judge, even if she had then conceived. But as it is, since, after two other childbirths of Leah from that night, the Lord gifted her with offspring, there is no reason why we should suspect concerning the mandrake any such thing as we have experienced in no woman. I will say, then, what I think: better men, perhaps, will say better things from this. For when I myself had seen these apples, and congratulated myself that this had befallen me on account of this very passage of the sacred reading (for it is a rare thing), I searched out their nature as diligently as I could—not by some knowledge remote from common sense, which teaches the virtues of roots and the powers of herbs, but as much as sight, and smell, and taste reported to me and to any man. Accordingly I found a thing beautiful and sweet-smelling, but insipid in flavor: and therefore why the woman so greatly desired it I confess I do not know, unless perhaps on account of the rarity of the fruit and the pleasantness of the odor. But why holy Scripture would not keep silent the very deed—which surely would not take care to insinuate to us such desires of women as a great matter, unless it admonished us to seek something great in them—I can conjecture nothing more than what is suggested to me from that common sense: that by that mandrake apple I understand to be figured good fame: not that which is conferred when a few just and wise men praise a man, but that popular fame by which a greater and more illustrious notice is gained: not to be sought for its own sake, but most necessary to the intention of good men, by which they provide for the human race. Whence the Apostle says: He must have a good testimony also from those who are outside (1 Tim 3:7): who, though they have little wisdom, yet for the most part render to the labor of those by whom they are provided for both the splendor of praise and the odor of good opinion. Nor do the first of those who are in the Church arrive at this popular glory, except whoever are engaged in the perils and labor of actions. Therefore Leah's son found the mandrake apples, going out into the field—that is, walking honestly to those who are outside: but that doctrine of wisdom which, most remote from the noise of the crowd, is fixed in the contemplation of truth with sweet delight, would not attain this popular glory, however small, except through those who, in the midst of the throngs, by acting and persuading, preside over the peoples, not that they may preside, but that they may profit: because, while those active and busy men, through whom the usefulness of the multitude is administered, and whose authority is dear to peoples, bear testimony also to the life that is at leisure for the sake of the zeal of seeking and contemplating truth, in a manner the mandrake apples come, through Leah, to Rachel. But to Leah herself through her firstborn son—that is, through the honor of her fertility, in which is all the fruit of the laborious action that ventures amid the uncertainties of temptations: which very many, endowed with good talent and burning with zeal, although they could be fit to rule peoples, yet avoid on account of turbulent occupations, and are carried with their whole heart into the leisure of doctrine, as it were into the embrace of the beautiful Rachel.

57. But because it is good that this life too, becoming more widely known, should merit popular glory, but it is unjust that it should attain it if it detains its lover, fit and suitable for administering ecclesiastical cares, in leisure, and does not impart him to the governance of the common usefulness; therefore Leah says to her sister: Is it too little for you that you have received my husband, do you also wish to take the mandrakes of my son? By one husband signifying all those who, although they are able by the virtue of acting, and worthy that the rule of the Church be committed to them for dispensing to it the sacrament of faith, kindled with the zeal of doctrine and of investigating and contemplating wisdom, wish to remove themselves from all troubles of actions, and to hide in the leisure of learning and teaching. So, then, it was said: Is it too little that you have received my husband, do you also wish to take the mandrakes of my son?—as if it were said: Is it too little that the life of studies detains in leisure men necessary for the labor of managing affairs, do you also require popular glory?

58. Accordingly, that she may justly obtain it, Rachel imparts her husband to her sister that night: so that, namely, those who by laborious virtue are suited to the rule of peoples, even if they had chosen to be at leisure for knowledge, may undertake the experience of temptations and the burden of cares for the common usefulness: lest the very doctrine of wisdom, for which they resolved to be at leisure, be blasphemed, and lest it not attain from the more ignorant peoples that good estimation which those apples signify, and which is necessary for the exhortation of learners. But plainly, that they may undertake this care, they are compelled by force. This too is sufficiently signified, that when Jacob came from the field, Leah met him, and detaining him said: You will come in to me; for I have hired you for my son's mandrakes (Gen 30:14–16). As if she said: Do you wish good opinion to be conferred on the doctrine you love? Do not flee the dutiful labor. Whoever notices that these things are done in the Church, sees it. We experience in examples what we understand in books. Who does not see this done throughout the whole world—men come from the works of the world and go into the leisure of knowing and contemplating truth, as it were into the embrace of Rachel; and are taken aside by ecclesiastical necessity, and ordained unto labor, as Leah says, "You will come in to me"? To whom, chastely dispensing the mystery of God, that they may beget sons of faith in the night of this world, even that life is praised by the peoples, for love of which, converted, they abandoned the hope of the world, and from the profession of which they were taken up to the mercy of ruling the people. For they act, in all their labors, that the profession to which they had turned, because it has given such rulers to the peoples, may be more widely and more illustriously glorified, as Jacob not refusing Leah's night, that Rachel may obtain the sweet-smelling and brightly shining apples: which sometimes she too, by the mercy of God granting it, bears by herself, scarcely at last indeed; because it is very rare that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1), and whatever is devoutly and wisely said on this matter, should be grasped, healthfully and even in part, without the phantasm of carnal thought.

59. Let these things, concerning the three fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose God the God whom the catholic Church worships willed himself to be called, suffice to have been said against the slanders of Faustus. Of the merits and piety of these three men, and of the loftiness of prophecy far removed from the judgment of carnal men, there is now no place to discuss: only they had to be defended, in this present work of ours, from those crimes with which a reviling tongue, hostile to truth, assailed them; lest those who read the holy and healthful Scriptures with a perverse and adverse mind should seem to say something for themselves, while with petulant revilings they attack those who there are preached with such great honor.

60. But Lot, the brother—that is, the blood relative—of Abraham, is by no means to be compared to these of whom God says, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exod 3:6); nor to be reckoned in the number of those to whom that Scripture bears testimony of righteousness to the end: although, having lived devoutly and chastely among the Sodomites, commended also by the merits of hospitality, he was freed from the burning of that land, and to his posterity a land of possession was given by the gift of God, on account of Abraham, who had been his uncle (See Gen 19). These merits are set forth to us in those books to be praised—not the drunkenness, not the incest (See Deut 2:9): but when we find written both the right deed and the sin of the same man, one is insinuated to be imitated, the other to be guarded against. Further, if the sin of Lot—to whom, before he sinned, testimony of righteousness was borne (See Wis 10:6)—not only does not discolor the divinity of God or the truth of that Scripture, but even commends it as to be praised and loved, in that, like the brightness of a faithful mirror, it indicates of the persons brought before it not only what is beautiful and whole, but also what is deformed and faulty; how much more does the deed of Judah, that he lay with his daughter-in-law (See Gen 38:13–18), bring nothing at all whereby the holy authority may be blamed: which, persisting founded in those books, despises by divine right not only the slanderous quibbles of a very few Manicheans, but even the horrendous enmities of so many and so great peoples of the gentiles, whom it has now subjugated almost wholly, from the nefarious superstition of idols, to the worship of the one true God by the Christian empire, with the world tamed, not by the violence of warlike contest, but by the power of unconquered truth? For where in those writings was Judah praised? What good did that Scripture testify of him, except that, in the prophecy of Christ, who from his tribe was foretold as to come in the flesh, he stood out commended above the rest by the blessing of his father (See Gen 49:8–12)?

61. But to that which Faustus mentioned, that he committed fornication, we add another: that he sold his brother Joseph into Egypt (See Gen 37:26–28). Do anyone's distorted limbs deprave the light, which shows forth all things? So neither do anyone's evil deeds make the Scripture evil, by whose disclosure they become known to readers. For when that eternal law, which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed, is consulted, it has established that the intercourse of man be done only for the sake of propagation, and this only in marriage socially ordered, which does not pervert the bond of peace: and therefore the prostitution of women set forth not for the substituting of offspring but for the satiating of lust is condemned by the divine and eternal law. For the baseness of a venal thing dishonors every buyer: and on this account Judah, although he would have sinned more grievously if, knowing she was his daughter-in-law, he had wished to lie with her (for if husband and wife, as the Lord says, are no longer two but one flesh (Mt 19:6), a daughter-in-law is to be reckoned no otherwise than a daughter); yet there is no doubt that he, as far as in him lay, lay basely with a harlot. But she who deceived her father-in-law sinned neither from concupiscence of his flesh, nor from desire of a harlot's wage: but, seeking offspring from that very blood from which, having now been married to two brothers and denied the third, she could not have it, she fraudulently subjected her body to be impregnated by their father, her father-in-law, having received a pledge of payment, which she reserved not for ornament but for testimony. Better indeed that she should remain without sons than become a mother without the right of marriage: yet she sinned with a far other intention, in that she provided her father-in-law as a father for her sons, than if she had desired him for herself as an adulterer. Finally, when by his command she was being led forth to death, and had produced the staff, the necklace, and the ring, saying that she was made pregnant by him whose pledges those were; when he recognized the things he had given, he answered that she was more justified than he, in that he had been unwilling to join his son to her as husband; by which destitution compelled, she sought posterity in that way rather than in no way, from no other than the same stock. In which sentence, saying not that she was justified, but that she was more justified than he, he neither praised her, but preferred her in comparison with himself; namely, blaming less the desire of having offspring, by which, led, she had subjected herself to her father-in-law, than the ardor of lustful intercourse, by which he himself had entered, conquered, as to a harlot: just as it is said to certain people, You have justified Sodom (Ezek 16:52)—that is, you have sinned so much that Sodom, compared to you, seems just. Although even if this woman is understood to be, not less blamed in comparison with a worse deed, but wholly praised by her father-in-law: yet, when that eternal law of justice is consulted, which forbids the natural order to be disturbed—not only, surely, of bodies, but most of all and first of minds, because in procreating sons she did not keep the ordained society—she is rightly found blameworthy: what wonder, if a sinner is praised by a sinner?

62. Which Faustus, or the Manichean perversity itself, judges to be against us in this way, as though, in the veneration and worthy proclamation of that Scripture, it were necessary for us to approve the vices of men which it mentions: nay rather, it is necessary that, the more religiously we receive it, the more confidently we blame those things which, through its truth, we have learned more certainly are to be blamed. For there fornication and every unlawful intercourse is condemned by divine right (See Exod 20:14, 17): and on this account, when it mentions such deeds of certain men, about which in that place it is silent about its own sentence, it permits them to us to be judged, it does not prescribe them to be praised. For who of us, in the Gospel itself, does not detest the cruelty of Herod, when, anxious about the birth of Christ, he ordered so many infants to be killed (See Mt 2:16)? But this deed is there not reproached, but only narrated. But lest the insane impudence of the Manicheans contend that this is false—because they deny even the very birth of Christ, by which Herod was disturbed—let them read the savagery and blindness of those very Jews, how it is there only narrated, not reproached, and yet detested by all.

63. But, they say, this Judah, who lay with his daughter-in-law, is counted among the twelve Patriarchs (See Gen 35:22–26). What of it? And that Judas who betrayed the Lord, was he not numbered among the twelve Apostles, and, with them, one of them, a devil, sent to preach the Gospel (See Mt 10:2–5; Jn 6:71–72)? But still they reply and say: That one, after such a crime, was destroyed by his own noose and removed from the number of the Apostles (See Mt 27:5); but this one, after this baseness, was, among his brothers, by that father to whom God bears so great testimony, especially blessed and praised above all (See Gen 49:8–12). Nay rather, from this it appears the more expressly that that prophecy pertains not to him, but to Christ, who from his tribe was foretold as to come in the flesh: and therefore the divine Scripture all the more ought not to be silent about his wickedness, as it was not silent, so that, in the words of his father, by which after that disgrace he is so praised, because he himself is not recognized, another may be sought.

64. Although Faustus may be understood to have wished, with his reviling tooth, to bite this very thing, that Christ is preached by us to have come from his tribe: especially because in the generations of his fathers, which the evangelist Matthew mentions, even Zerah, whom that Tamar bore from that conception, is found (See Mt 1:3; Gen 38:30). For if he wished to reproach the stock of Jacob, not the generation of Christ, he had rather the firstborn Reuben, who violated his father's bed with nefarious lust (See Gen 35:22): such a fornication as the Apostle says was not heard of even among the gentiles (See 1 Cor 5:1). Which deed even the father Jacob himself, when he blessed them, did not keep silent over his head, accusing and detesting it (See Gen 49:3–4). This crime, then, Faustus would rather have objected, where there appears not an error from a harlot's garb, but an altogether voluntary contamination of the father's bed; were it not that he hated Tamar herself more, in that by that intercourse she desired nothing but to bear, than if she had burned with mere lust of carnal pleasure; and wished, by blaming Christ's ancestors, to derogate from faith in his Incarnation: not knowing, wretch, that the most true and most truthful Savior was a master not only by speaking, but also by being born. For his faithful, to come from all nations, had to learn even by the example of his very flesh that the iniquities of their parents cannot harm them. Accordingly that Bridegroom, suiting himself to his guests, who was to call good and evil to the wedding (See Mt 22:10), willed even to be born of good and evil: so that he might confirm that the prophecy of the Passover, in which a lamb was commanded to be eaten, taken from sheep and goats (See Exod 12:3–5), as it were just and unjust, had gone before for the prefiguring of himself. For everywhere preserving the evidences of God and man, he did not spurn parents both good and evil, on account of the fittingness of his humanity, but chose the childbearing of a virgin, on account of the miracle of his divinity.

65. In vain, then, Faustus, raging rather against himself with a sacrilegious tooth, accuses the holy Scripture, which the whole world now deservedly venerates: which, as I said above, like the brightness of a faithful mirror, accepts no person to be flattered, but either itself judges both the praiseworthy and blameworthy deeds of men, or sets them forth to readers to be judged; and not only intimating the men themselves as either blameworthy or praiseworthy, but also not keeping silent about certain things in the blameworthy that are to be praised, and in the praiseworthy that are to be blamed. For not because Saul was a blameworthy man is therefore his deed not praiseworthy, that, having so diligently investigated the tasting of the anathema, he tried so severely to avenge it, obeying God, who had forbidden this to be done (See 1 Sam 14:24–45); or that he removed the pythons and ventriloquists from his kingdom (See 1 Sam 28:3): nor because David was praiseworthy are therefore his sins, which God too reproved through the prophet (See 2 Sam 12:1–14), to be approved or imitated. Just as in Pontius Pilate it is not to be reproached that, against the accusations of the Jews, he judged the innocent Lord (Jn 19:4, 6); nor in Peter is it to be praised that he denied the same Lord three times (See Mt 26:70–74); or that for which he was called Satan by him, in that, not savoring the things of God, he wished to recall him from the passion—that is, from our salvation: a little before, then, called blessed (See Mt 16:17), a little after he was called Satan (See Mt 16:22–23). But what prevailed in him, his apostolate and the crown of his martyrdom testify.

66. So, then, we read also the sins of King David, but we read also his right deeds. But in which he prevailed, and whence he conquered what, is plain enough—not to malevolent blindness, by which Faustus rushed upon the holy books and men, but to religious prudence, by which both the divine authority and the human merits can be seen and discerned. For let these people read and see that God reproved more in David than Faustus did (See 2 Sam 12; 24): but there too is the sacrifice of penance, there is that incomparable meekness even toward a most monstrous and most atrocious enemy, who, as often as he was given into his most powerful hands, so often was sent away by him unharmed from his most devout hands (See 1 Sam 24; 26). There is the memorable humility under the scourge of God, and the royal neck so subjected to the dominical yoke that, armed and accompanied by armed men, he most patiently endured bitter revilings from an enemy's mouth; and most modestly restrained his companion, inflamed with wrath that his king should hear such things, and now and now proceeding with avenging right hand against the head of the reviler, adding to his royal command the weight of divine fear, and saying that this was rendered to his deserts by the supernal judgment, by which that injurious man had been sent to hurl such reproaches against him (See 2 Sam 16). There is so great pastoral love toward the flock committed to him that he himself wished to die for them, when, the people having been numbered, it pleased God so to punish the sin of his elation that he diminished that same number by the death of many, by whose multitude the king's heart had been tempted with pride: in which hidden judgment God, with whom there is no iniquity (See Rom 9:14), both withdrew from this life those whom he knew unworthy of this life; and in him who had exalted himself from the abundance of men, healed the swelling of the human mind by the diminution of that same abundance. There is so religious a fear of God that he preserved the sacrament of Christ in the holy anointing, so that his heart trembled with devout solicitude when he secretly cut off a small piece from Saul's very garment, that he might have whereby to give him assurance that he was unwilling, when he could, to kill him. There is so prudent and so great a clemency toward his sons that, when he did not mourn the innocent boy now dead, for whom, sick, casting himself down with many tears and the squalor of humility, he had entreated the Lord; the same man both wished preserved, and wept slain, the young son, headlong in parricidal fury, who had both stained his father's bed with nefarious defilements and was waging wicked war against his father: foreseeing, namely, the everlasting punishments of a soul involved in such great crimes, which, to escape, he desired him to live, humbled, that he might be corrected through penance (See 2 Sam 18). These and many other things to be praised and imitated are found in that holy man, if a perverse mind does not search out that Scripture which speaks of him, especially if with a mind submissive and devout and plainly faithful we follow the sentence of God, who knew the hidden things of his heart, where, in the sight of him who cannot be deceived, it so pleased that he was even set forth by him to his own sons to be imitated.

67. For what else but the depths of his heart did the Spirit of God discern, when, rebuked through the prophet, he said, I have sinned; and immediately, at this one word, deserved to hear that he had received pardon? For what thing, except for eternal salvation? For the discipline of the paternal scourge was not omitted in him, according to God's threat, so that, having confessed, he might be freed forever, and, afflicted temporally, might be proved. Nor indeed was it a mediocre strength of faith, or a small indication of a meek and obedient mind, that when he had heard from the prophet that God had pardoned him, and yet the things that had been threatened consequently came to pass, he did not say that he had been deceived by the prophet's lie, nor murmur against God, as if he had pronounced false the pardon of his sins. For the man, deeply holy, and lifting his soul not against God but to God, understood that, unless the Lord were favorable to him confessing and repenting, how great a measure of eternal punishments his sins deserved: for which, when he was being burned with temporal corrections, he saw both that pardon remained toward him, and that the medicine was not neglected. But why did Saul, rebuked through Samuel, when he too said, I have sinned (1 Sam 15:24), not deserve to hear what David did, that the Lord had pardoned him? Is there acceptance of persons with God? Far be it (See Gal 2:6). But in a like voice which the human sense heard, there was a dissimilar breast which the divine eye discerned. What are we taught by such examples, except that the kingdom of heaven is within us (See Lk 17:21), and that we ought to worship God from our inmost parts, so that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (See Mt 12:34); but not so that the people honor him with the lips, while their heart is far from him (See Mt 15:8): nor that we dare to judge otherwise about men, whose inner parts we cannot see, than God who can do this, and cannot be deceived or corrupted; whose most evident sentence about David, since the so sublime authority of the divine Scripture contains it, is human rashness, judging otherwise, much to be laughed at, or rather grieved over? For those divine books about the ancient men are to be believed, who foretold things so far in the future, which are now seen as present.

68. What else do we learn in the Gospel, when the same voice of Peter is heard confessing Christ the Son of God (See Mt 16:16), which the demons too uttered—equal words, but with a far unequal heart (See Lk 8:28)? Accordingly, in a like voice the faith of Peter is praised, the uncleanness of the demons restrained: by whom, except by him who knew how to inspect, not with human ear but with divine mind, the inner roots of those voices, and to discern them without any falsity? For how many other men too say that Christ is the Son of the living God, and yet are not compared to the merits of Peter: not only those who will say in that day, Lord, Lord, and will hear, Depart from me (See Mt 7:22–23); but even those who will be set apart at the right hand (See Mt 25:33), among whom very many neither ever even once denied Christ, nor disapproved his passion for our salvation, nor compelled the gentiles to Judaize (See Gal 2:14); and yet to Peter, who did these things, sitting on the twelve thrones, and judging not only the twelve tribes but even the angels, they will appear unequal? So too many, desiring no man's wife, persecuting to death no husband of a desired one, yet cannot have the Davidic merit before God, though this man did those things. So great is the difference of what each thing is in oneself, and how much it displeases, that it may be utterly uprooted; and what fruitful and opulent thing rises up for it with vast fertility: because to farmers too those fields are more pleasing which, with even great thorns rooted out, produce a hundredfold, than those which never had any thorns and scarcely reach thirtyfold.

69. So too Moses, the most faithful servant of God in all his house, minister of the holy law, and of the holy, just, and good commandment, to whom the Apostle bears witness (See Heb 3:5; Rom 7:12)—for these words I mentioned are his: minister too of the sacraments, not now bestowing salvation, but still promising the Savior, which the Savior himself confirms, saying, If you believed Moses, you would believe me too; for he wrote about me (Jn 5:46), whence in its place, as much as seemed sufficient, we discoursed against the impudent slanders of the Manicheans; this Moses, then, the servant of the living God, the true God, the highest God, fabricator of heaven and earth, not from another's material but from nothing, not under the pressure of necessity but from abounding goodness, not through the punishment of a member of his but through the power of his word: this Moses, I say, humble in refusing so great a ministry (See Exod 4:10), submissive in undertaking it, faithful in keeping it, strenuous in carrying it out; in ruling the people watchful, in correcting vehement, in loving ardent, in enduring patient; who, for those over whom he presided, interposed himself before God when he took counsel, opposed himself before God when he was angry: this man, I say, so great and so good, far be it from us to weigh from the reviling mouth of Faustus; but from the plainly truthful mouth of God, who truly knew the man whom he had made: since he both, as a judge, recognizes even the sins of men, which he himself does not do, in those who deny them, and, as a father, pardons them in those who confess them. From his mouth altogether we both love, and admire, and as much as we can imitate Moses his servant, although we are far inferior to his merits, even with no Egyptian either killed or despoiled, no war waged—of which he did the one by the disposition of a future defender, the other by an imposed command of God.

70. To pass over for the moment that, when he struck the Egyptian (See Exod 2:12), although God had not commanded him, yet in a prophetic person it was divinely permitted that this be done, that he might pre-signify something to come: of which I am now not treating, but discussing those deeds altogether as though they signified nothing; and, that eternal law being consulted, I find that a man ought not to have been killed by one who bore no ordained power, however injurious and wicked he was. Nevertheless, souls capable of and fertile in virtue often send ahead vices, by which they indicate this very thing—to what virtue they are most suited, if they have been cultivated by precepts. For just as farmers too, what land they have seen, although useless, yet producing huge weeds, pronounce fit for grain; and where they have looked upon fern, although they know it must be uprooted, they understand it suitable for strong vines; and what mountain they have seen growing wild with wild olives, they do not doubt it useful for olives, with cultivation added: so that motion of mind, by which Moses, not observing the order of power, did not endure that a fellow countryman suffering injury from a wicked citizen should be unavenged, was not useless for the fruits of virtues, but, still uncultivated, poured forth faulty indeed, but signs of great fertility. He himself, finally, through his angel, called Moses by divine words on Mount Sinai, through whom the people of Israel would be freed from Egypt; and by the miracle of the vision in the flaming and unburning bush, and by dominical words, prepared him for the fruit of obedience (See Exod 3:4): he who also called Saul, persecuting the Church, from heaven, prostrated, raised, filled him; as it were struck, cut off, grafted, made fruitful (See Acts 9:4). For that savagery of Paul, when, according to the zeal of his ancestral traditions, he persecuted the Church (See Gal 1:14), thinking he did a service to God, was as it were a wild vice, but an indication of great fruitfulness. Hence too was that of Peter, when, with sword drawn, wishing to defend the Lord, he cut off the persecutor's ear: which deed the Lord sufficiently menacingly restrained, saying, Put back the sword; for whoever uses the sword will fall by the sword (Mt 26:51–52). But he uses the sword who, with no superior and lawful power either commanding or permitting, arms himself for the blood of another. For surely the Lord had commanded that his disciples carry the sword, but had not commanded that they strike. What incongruity, then, if Peter, after this sin, was made shepherd of the Church, as Moses, after the Egyptian was struck, was made ruler of that Synagogue? For each, not by a detestable monstrousness, but by an amendable spiritedness, exceeded the rule of justice: each sinned by hatred of another's wickedness, but the one by fraternal, the other by dominical love, though still carnal. This vice must be cut back or uprooted; but yet so great a heart, like land for crops, must be cultivated for bearing virtues.

71. What, then, does Faustus now object concerning the despoiled Egyptians, not knowing what he says? In doing which Moses so far from sinned that, by not doing it, he would have sinned. For God had commanded it (See Exod 3:21–22; 11:2; 12:35–36), who surely knows, not only according to deeds, but also according to the heart of man, what each ought to suffer, or through whom. And so that people was still carnal, and occupied with desire of earthly things: but the Egyptians sacrilegious and unjust; for both, using that gold—that is, a creature of God—badly, to the injury of the Creator, they served their idols, and they had afflicted foreign men with gratuitous labor unjustly and vehemently. Worthy, then, were both these, to whom such things were commanded, and those, who suffered such things: and perhaps, according to their own wills and thoughts, the Hebrews were rather permitted to do these things than commanded; but God willed his permission to be made known to them through his servant Moses, when he commanded that he should say it. But it can be that there are other most hidden causes why this was said divinely to that people: but to divine commands one must yield by obeying, not resist by disputing. The Apostle said: For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? (Rom 11:34) Whether, then, this be the cause which I have said, or any other lie hidden in the secret and hidden disposition of God, why he said this through Moses to that people, that they should ask of the Egyptians, to carry off, things to be lent to them; this, nevertheless, I affirm: that it was said neither in vain nor unjustly, and that Moses could not do otherwise than God had said, so that with the Lord was the counsel of commanding, but with the servant the obedience of carrying out.

72. But, he says, the true and good God is by no means to be believed to have commanded such things. Nay rather, none but the true and good God rightly commands such things—he who alone knows what is to be commanded to each, and alone allows no one to suffer anything unsuited to him. For the rest, let that ignorant and false goodness of the human heart contradict Christ too, lest, with the good God commanding, the impious and wicked suffer some evil, when he is about to say to the angels, Gather first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn. He nevertheless forbade the servants wishing to do this very thing unseasonably, saying, Lest perhaps, when you wish to gather the tares, you uproot together with them the wheat also (Mt 13:29–30). Thus the true and good God alone knows what, when, to whom, through whom he either commands or permits something to be done. This human, not goodness, but plainly vanity, could also contradict the same Lord, when, with their noxious desire, he permitted the demons wishing and asking to go into the swine (See Mt 8:31–32): especially because the Manicheans believed that not only swine, but even tiny and abject animals, have the souls of men. With which vanity disapproved and rejected, this nevertheless stands: that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, and on this account the true and good God, granted to the desire of the demons the death of another's cattle, the destruction of living things of whatever kind, and the grave loss of men. But who, most insane, would say that he could not have excluded them from men, even if he had been unwilling to grant to their noxious will the destruction of the swine? Further, if the savage and unjust desire of spirits condemned and already destined for eternal fire was, by the Creator and Orderer of all natures, by a hidden but everywhere just governance, relaxed to that toward which it had inclined itself; what is absurd if the Egyptians deserved to be deprived by the Hebrews—men unjustly lording it, by free men, to whom they had also been debtors of wages for their so hard and unjust labors—of earthly things, which they were even using by a sacrilegious rite to the injury of the Creator? Which, nevertheless, if Moses had commanded of his own accord, or the Hebrews had done of their own accord, they would surely have sinned: although they sinned, not indeed by doing this which God either commanded or permitted, but yet perhaps by desiring such things. But that they were permitted to do this by divine dispensation, they were permitted by his just and good judgment, who knows both how, by punishments, to restrain the wicked or instruct the subject; and to give stronger precepts to the more sound, and to ordain certain medicinal steps for the weaker. But Moses is neither to be charged with cupidity in those desired things, nor with contumacy in any divine commands whatever despised.

73. For certain deeds that eternal law, which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed, has so placed in a certain middle position for men, that in usurping them audacity is deservedly reproached, but in carrying them out obedience is rightly praised. So great a difference is there, in the natural order, what is done by whom, and under whom each acts. If Abraham had immolated his son of his own accord, what would he be but horrible and insane? But with God commanding, what did he appear but faithful and devoted (See Gen 22:10)? Which truth itself so cries out that Faustus, terrified by its voice, when, against Abraham himself, seeking with nails and teeth what to say, he reached even to a slanderous lie, yet did not dare to reproach this: unless perhaps that deed did not come into his mind, so noble that, unread and unsought, it would not occur to the mind—so famous, finally, sung in so many tongues, painted in so many places, that it would strike both the ears and eyes of one feigning ignorance. Wherefore, if in killing his son a spontaneous motion is found execrable, but, with God commanding, a complying service not only inculpable but even praiseworthy; why, Faustus, do you reproach Moses, that he despoiled the Egyptians? If the wickedness, as it were, of one doing human things irritates you, let the divine authority of the one commanding terrify you. Or are you prepared to find fault with God himself too, willing such things to be done? Get behind me, then, Satan; for you do not savor the things of God, but the things of men (Mt 16:23). And would that you had been worthy to hear this as Peter did, and afterward had preached that which, in God, you reproach with a weak sense; just as he afterward, with glorious proclamation, announced to the gentiles what at first, when the Lord willed it to be done, displeased him.

74. Wherefore, if at last human hardness, and the depraved and perverse will in right matters, understands that it makes the greatest difference whether something is committed by human cupidity or rashness, or whether God's command is obeyed—he who knows what, when, to whom he permits or commands, what it befits each to do and to suffer—let it neither marvel at nor shudder at the wars waged through Moses, because in them too, following divine commands, he was not raging but obedient: nor did God, when he commanded these things, rage; but he repaid worthy things to the worthy, and terrified the worthy. For what is blamed in war? Is it that men die who will sometime die anyway, that those who will live may be tamed in peace? To reproach this is the part of the timid, not of the religious. The desire of harming, the cruelty of avenging, an unappeased and unappeasable mind, the savagery of rebelling, the lust of domination, and whatever similar things—these are what are rightly blamed in wars; which, for the most part, that they may even be rightly punished, against the violence of those resisting, whether God or some lawful power commanding, the wars themselves are undertaken to be waged by good men, when they find themselves in that order of human affairs where the order itself justly constrains them either to command some such thing, or to obey in such things. Otherwise John, when soldiers came to him to be baptized, saying, And we, what shall we do? would have answered them: Throw away your arms, desert that military service; strike, wound, lay low no one. But because he knew that they, in doing these things by military service, were not murderers but ministers of the law; and not avengers of their own injuries, but defenders of the public safety, he answered them: Do violence to no one, slander no one, let your pay suffice for you (Lk 3:14). But because the Manicheans are accustomed openly to blaspheme John, let them hear the Lord Jesus Christ himself commanding that pay to be rendered to Caesar which John says ought to suffice for the soldier. Render, he says, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's (Mt 22:21). For to this end too tributes are paid, that, on account of wars, pay may necessarily be furnished to the soldier. Deservedly too he praised the faith of that centurion who said, I too am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this one, Go, and he goes; and to another, Come, and he comes; and to my servant, Do this, and he does it (Mt 8:9–10)—he did not command the desertion of that military service. But about just and unjust wars to dispute now is long, and not necessary.

75. For it makes a difference for what causes and under what authorities men undertake wars to be waged: yet that natural order, accommodated to the peace of mortals, demands this, that the authority and counsel of undertaking war be with the prince; but the ministry of carrying out the war's commands soldiers owe to peace and the common safety. But a war that is undertaken to be waged by God's authority, it is not lawful to doubt is rightly undertaken, whether to terrify, or to crush, or to subjugate the pride of mortals: since not even that which is waged by human cupidity can harm anything, not only the incorruptible God, but also his saints; for whom it is rather found even to profit, for the exercising of patience, and for the humbling of the soul, and for the bearing of paternal discipline. For no one has any power over them, unless it has been given him from above. For there is no power but from God (See Rom 13:1), whether commanding or permitting. When, therefore, a just man, if perchance he serves as a soldier even under a sacrilegious human king, rightly fights at his command, keeping the order of civic peace—he for whom what is commanded is either certainly not against God's precept, or, whether it is, is not certain, so that perhaps the iniquity of commanding makes the king guilty, but the order of serving shows the soldier innocent: how much more innocently is he engaged in the administration of wars who wages war at God's command, whom no one who serves him is unaware cannot command anything evil.

76. But if they suppose that God could not, on this account, command a war to be waged, because the Lord Jesus Christ afterward says, I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the left also (Mt 5:39); let them understand that this preparation is not in the body, but in the heart: for there is the holy chamber of that virtue which dwelt in those ancient just fathers of ours too; but the order of the dispensation of things and the distribution of times demanded that it first appear that even those earthly goods—in which both human kingdoms and victories over enemies are reckoned, for the sake of which especially the city of the impious, spread through the world, is wont to supplicate idols and demons—pertain to nothing but the power and choice of the one true God. Whence the Old Testament too veiled the secret of the kingdom of heaven, to be opened at the opportune time, with earthly promises, and in a manner shaded it more obscurely. But when the fullness of time came, that the New Testament might be revealed which was veiled by the figures of the Old, it now had to be demonstrated by evident testimony that there is another life for which this life ought to be despised, and another kingdom for which the adversity of all earthly kingdoms ought to be most patiently endured. Accordingly, those through whose confessions, passions, and deaths it pleased God to attest this are called martyrs, which in Latin is interpreted "witnesses": of whom so great a number flourished that, if Christ, who called Saul from heaven, and, having made him from a wolf a sheep, sent him into the midst of wolves (See Acts 9), had wished to gather them armed and to aid them fighting, as he aided the Hebrew fathers, what nations would resist? What kingdoms would not yield? But that a most illustrious testimony might be borne to the truth, by which it now had to be taught that God is to be served not for the sake of temporal felicity in this life, but for eternal felicity after this life, that which is commonly called infelicity had to be undergone and borne for the sake of that felicity. And so in the fullness of times the Son of God, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law (See Gal 4:4–5), made of the seed of David according to the flesh (See Rom 1:3), sends his disciples as sheep into the midst of wolves, and warns them not to fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; he promises too that the very integrity of the body will be renewed even to the restoring of a hair (See Mt 10:16, 28, 30); he recalls Peter's sword into the sheath; he restores the enemy's cut-off ear to its former form; he says he could have commanded legions of angels to destroy his enemies, unless the cup had to be drunk which the Father's will had given (See Mt 26:52–53; Lk 22:42; Jn 18:11); he drinks it, going before, and offers it to those who follow; he reveals the virtue of patience by his precept, confirms it by his example. On account of which God raised him from the dead and gave him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9–11). The Patriarchs and Prophets, then, reigned here, that it might be shown that God gives and takes away even these kingdoms: the Apostles and martyrs did not reign here, that the kingdom of heaven might rather be laid open as the thing to be desired. Those kings waged wars, that it might appear that such victories too are granted by God's will: these, by not resisting, were killed, that they might teach that to be slain for the faith of the truth is the better victory. Although even there the Prophets knew how to die for the truth, as the Lord himself says, From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah (Mt 23:35): and here, after it began to be fulfilled which, under the figure of Solomon (who in Latin is interpreted "Peaceable"), was prophesied in the Psalm concerning the Lord Christ (for he himself is our peace (See Eph 2:14)), And all the kings of the earth shall adore him, all nations shall serve him (Ps 72:11 (71:11)); Christian emperors too, bearing full confidence of piety in Christ, gained a most glorious victory over their sacrilegious enemies, who had placed their hope in the sacraments of idols and demons; when, by the most open and well-known proofs, of which some have already committed to memory in writing, the divinations of the demons deceived those, and the predictions of the saints confirmed these.

77. But if it seems a wonder to these vain people that God commanded one thing then to the dispensers of the Old Testament, where the grace of the New was veiled, and another to the preachers of the New Testament, where the obscurity of the Old is revealed, let them attend to the Lord Christ himself changing what he had said, and saying another thing: When I sent you, he says, without purse and bag and shoes, did you lack anything? But they said: Nothing. He says, then, to them: But now let him who has a purse take it, likewise also a bag; and let him who has none sell his tunic and buy a sword. These people, surely, if they found these diverse things in the two separate Testaments, the Old and the New, would even from this cry out that the two Testaments were contrary to themselves. What, then, will they now reply, when the same one himself says: Before, I sent you without purse and bag and shoes, and you lacked nothing; but now let him who has a purse take it, likewise also a bag; and let him who has a tunic sell it and buy a sword? Do they now understand how, by no inconstancy of the one commanding, but by the reasoning of the one dispensing, according to the diversity of times, precepts, or counsels, or permissions are changed? For if they say that for the sake of a certain mystery he spoke this about taking the purse and bag and buying a sword, why do they not admit that for the sake of a certain mystery the same one God then commanded the Prophets to wage wars, and now forbade the Apostles? For in that which we mentioned from the Gospel there were not only the Lord's words, but the deeds too of the obeying disciples followed. For both then they went without purse and bag, and lacked nothing, as his question and their answer declared. And now they said to him, when he had commanded about buying a sword: Behold, here are two swords. And he answered: It is enough. Hence Peter too was found armed, when he cut off the persecutor's ear: where his spontaneous audacity is restrained (Lk 22:35–36, 38, 50–51); because, just as he had been commanded to take up iron, he had not so been commanded to strike. The Lord's will surely lay hidden, why he had commanded arms to be carried which he was unwilling they should use. Nevertheless, to him it belonged to command with reason, but to those to do the commands without questioning.

78. With a slanderous ignorance, then, Moses is reproached for having waged wars, who ought to have been reproached less if he waged them of his own accord than if, with God commanding, he did not wage them: but to dare to reproach God himself, that he commanded such things, or to disbelieve that the just and good God could command such things, is the part of a man—to speak more mildly—unable to consider that to the divine providence, extending through all things highest and lowest, neither is that new which arises, nor does that perish which dies; but that single things, each in their own order, whether of natures or of merits, either give way, or succeed, or remain: but that the right will of men is joined to the divine law, while disordered cupidity is restrained by the order of the divine law; so that neither does the good man will anything other than what is commanded, nor can the evil man do more than is permitted; yet so, indeed, that he cannot do with impunity what he has unjustly willed. And on this account, in all the things which human weakness shudders at or fears, only iniquity is rightly condemned: the rest are either the tributes of natures or the merits of faults. But a man becomes iniquitous when he loves for their own sake things to be taken up for the sake of something else, and seeks for the sake of something else things to be loved for their own sake. For thus, as far as in him lies, he disturbs in himself the natural order which the eternal law commands to be preserved. But a man becomes just when he seeks to use things for no other end than that for which they were divinely instituted; but to enjoy God himself for his own sake, and himself and his friend in God for the sake of that same God. For he loves a friend for God's sake, who loves the love of God in his friend. But whether iniquity or justice, unless it were in the will, it would not be in our power. Further, if it were not in our power, no reward, no punishment would be just: which no one is wise enough to perceive except one who is foolish. But ignorance and weakness—so that a man either does not know what he ought to will, or cannot do all that he has willed—come from the hidden order of punishments, and from those unsearchable judgments of God, with whom there is no iniquity (See Rom 9:14). For the sin of Adam was disclosed to us by the faithful word of God; and that in him all die, and that through him sin entered into this world, and through sin death, was truly written (See Rom 5:12–19). And that from this punishment the body is corrupted and weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the sense that thinks many things (See Wis 9:15), is most true and most well known to us: and that from this just punishment none but merciful grace frees us, is certain. And hence the Apostle, groaning, exclaims: Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24–25). But what the distribution of the judging and pitying God is—why one thus, another otherwise—is done by hidden causes, yet just. Yet we do not therefore not know that all these things are done by the judgment or mercy of God, although by measures and numbers and weights set in the hidden, by which all things are disposed by God the creator of all things that naturally are (See Wis 11:21 (11:20)); not the author, but yet the orderer, even of sins; so that the things which would not be sins unless they were against nature are so judged and ordered that they are not permitted to disturb or disfigure the nature of the universe, being assigned to the places and conditions of their merits. Since these things are so, and since through this secret of God's judgments and the motions of human wills, by the same prosperities some are corrupted, others use them temperately; and by the same adversities some fail, others profit; and since human and mortal life itself is a temptation upon the earth (See Job 7:1): who of men knows to whom it profits or harms, in peace to reign or to serve, or to be at leisure, or to die; but in war to command, or to fight, or to conquer, or to be killed? Since this, however, is established, that both to whom it profits, it profits only by divine benefit; and to whom it harms, it harms only by divine judgment.

79. Why, then, do we leap into rash reproaches—and would that they were of men, and not of God? Let the dispensers of the Old Testament, themselves also the foretellers of the New Testament, have served by killing sinners; let the dispensers of the New Testament, themselves also the expounders of the Old Testament, have served by dying at the hands of sinners: yet both served the one God, teaching, through diverse and fitting times, that temporal goods are both to be sought from him and to be despised for his sake, and that temporal troubles can both be commanded by him and ought to be tolerated for his sake. What, then, did Moses command or do that was cruel, when, holily zealous for the people committed to him and desiring them to be subject to the one true God, after he learned that they had slipped away to fabricating and worshiping an idol and had prostituted an unchaste mind to demons, avenging with the sword upon a few of them whom God himself, whom they had offended, had willed by a deep and secret judgment to be struck and soon struck, he both healthfully terrified the present and established discipline for the future? For that he did what he did with no cruelty, but with great love, who would not recognize in his words, praying for their sin and saying, If you forgive their sin, forgive it; but if not, blot me out of your book (Exod 32)? Every devoutly prudent person, then, comparing that slaughter and this prayer, sees surely most openly, sees how great an evil it is for the soul to fornicate through the images of demons, when he so rages who so loves. So too, plainly, the Apostle, not cruelly but lovingly, handed over a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus (See 1 Cor 5:5). He handed over others too, that they might learn not to blaspheme (See 1 Tim 1:20). The Manicheans read apocryphal writings, written under the name of the Apostles by I know not what cobblers of fables: which, in the times of their writers, would have deserved to be received into the authority of the holy Church, if holy and learned men, who then were in this life and could examine such things, had recognized that they spoke true things. There, nevertheless, they read that the apostle Thomas, when he was at a certain wedding feast, a stranger and altogether unknown, struck on the palm by a certain servant, imprecated upon the man a continual and savage vengeance. For when he had gone out to the fountain, whence he was to minister water to the feasters, a lion, rushing upon him, killed him, and his hand, with which he had struck the apostle's head with a light blow, torn from his body, a dog brought, according to the word of that same apostle desiring and imprecating it, onto the tables at which the apostle himself was reclining. What can seem crueler than this? But because there, unless I am mistaken, this too is written, that he asked pardon for him in the world to come, a compensation of a greater benefit was made; so that both how dear to God the apostle was might be commended to the unknown by this fear, and the man might, after this life that must someday end, be provided for forever. Whether that narration be true or fabricated, it is now of no concern to me. For certainly the Manicheans, by whom those writings which the ecclesiastical Canon rejects are accepted as true and genuine, are at least from this compelled to confess that that virtue of patience which the Lord teaches, saying, If anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the left also (Mt 5:39), can be in the preparation of the heart, even if it is not displayed by the gesture of the body and the expression of words: since the apostle, struck on the palm, rather asked God that the injurious man be spared in the future age, but that in the present that injury not be left unavenged, than that he offered the other side to the one striking, or admonished him to strike again. He surely held inwardly the affection of love, and outwardly sought the example of correction. Whether this be true or fabricated, why are they unwilling to believe that with such a mind Moses, the servant of God, laid low with the sword the fabricators and adorers of an idol; when even in his words it sufficiently appears that he begged pardon for a sin of this kind in such a way that, unless he obtained it, he wished himself to be blotted out of God's book? And what is similar—an unknown man struck on the palm, and God freeing from the slavery of Egypt, leading through the divided sea, covering the pursuing enemies with the waves, abandoned and despised when an idol was preferred to him? But if we compare the punishments themselves, what is similar—to be killed by iron, and to be slaughtered and torn by beasts? since judges, serving the public laws, command those guilty of a greater crime to be exposed to beasts, rather than struck by the sword.

80. There remains, among the reviling and sacrilegious reproaches of Faustus to which I now reply, what the Lord said in speaking to the prophet Hosea: Take to yourself a wife of fornication, and make children of fornication (Hos 1:2). In which Scripture their unclean heart is so blinded that they do not understand even the most open evangelical words of the Lord saying to the Jews: Harlots and tax collectors will go before you into the kingdom of heaven (Mt 21:31). For what is against the truth of clemency, what hostile to the Christian faith, if a harlot, having left fornication, is changed into a chaste marriage? And what so incongruous and foreign to the faith of the prophet, as if he did not believe that all the sins of an unchaste woman, changed for the better, were forgiven? And so, when the prophet made a harlot his wife, both provision was made for the woman to correct her life, and the sacrament of a figure, of which we shall presently speak, was expressed. But who does not see in this deed what rather offends the error of the Manicheans? Namely, because harlots are accustomed to take care that they do not become pregnant. Accordingly, to these people one remaining a harlot pleased more, that she might not bind their god, than one made the wife of one man, that she might bear.

81. But about Solomon what shall I say, except that he is more grievously refuted by the testimony of his own faithful and holy Scripture than by the petulant and trifling revilings of Faustus? For it spoke truly and faithfully about him, both what good he had first had, and what evil, by doing, he had abandoned the good in which he had first been (See 1 Kgs 3:11; Sir 47): but this man, with eyes closed—or rather extinguished—went, not by the light that, manifesting, led him; but rushed on by the malevolence that, precipitating, carried him. For by this very thing the holy books the more insinuated to their religious readers and choosers how chastely the holy men had several wives; in that Solomon, who had them not in that manner, but rather for lust than for offspring, was disapproved and reproached with these words, so that he was called a lover of women; and thence, lapsed and sunk into the depth of idolatry, he was, by the same truth that accepts the person of no one, exposed.

82. Now, then, all the persons having been treated through whom Faustus thought the Scriptures of the Old Testament were to be blamed, and a fitting discourse rendered to each, by which either the men of God were defended against the slanders of heretics and carnal men, or, with the men reproached, the Scripture was nonetheless shown praiseworthy and venerable: let us see next, in the order in which Faustus mentioned those men by accusing them, what the very deeds of the men also signify, what prophecies they bear, what future things they foretell: which we have already done concerning Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, whose God God willed himself so to be called (See Exod 3:15), as though he were the God of them alone, who is the God of the whole creation: not in vain surely granting them so great an honor, except because he knew in them what he alone could even perfectly and supremely know, a sincere and especial love: and because in those three Fathers he in a manner consummated the great and marvelous sacrament of his future people, which they begot through free women, not only unto freedom, as through Sarah (See Gen 21:1–2) and Rebecca (See Gen 25:21) and Leah and Rachel (See Gen 29; 30); but also unto slavery, as through that same Rebecca Esau was born, to whom it was said, You shall be your brother's servant (Gen 27:40); and through handmaids not only unto slavery, as through Hagar (See Gen 16:15), but also unto freedom, as through Bilhah and Zilpah (See Gen 30). For thus, in the people of God too, both through spiritual free people are born not only unto praiseworthy freedom, as those to whom it is said, Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Cor 4:16); but also unto damnable slavery, as Simon through Philip (See Acts 8:13); and through carnal slaves are born not only unto damnable slavery, who imitate them; but also unto praiseworthy freedom, those to whom it is said, What they say, do; but what they do, do not do (Mt 23:3). Whoever prudently recognizes this great sacrament in the people of God guards the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace unto the end, by cleaving to some, by tolerating others. We have done this concerning Lot too; showing what of his the Scripture narrated to be praised, what to be blamed, what to be understood concerning that whole deed it signified (See Gen 19).

83. It follows that we consider what the deed of Judah, that he lay with his daughter-in-law (See Gen 38), signified of things to come. But first it must be premised, lest it offend anyone of small consideration, that concerning certain evil works of men, in the holy Scriptures, certain things not evil, but good, are signified as to come. For everywhere divine providence keeps the virtue of its goodness, so that, just as from the intercourse of adulterers a man is formed and born—a good work of God from men's evil work, as we have already said in the preceding discourse (See above, sec. 48), from the fertility of seeds, not from the baseness of vices; so in the prophetic Scriptures, which narrate not only the good deeds of men, but also the evil, since the narration itself is prophetic, something is signified, even of future good things, by the evil works of men—not by the work of the one sinning, but of the one writing. For Judah, when, conquered by concupiscence, he went in to Tamar, did not bear this intention of his lust, that something might thereby be signified which pertained to the salvation of men: just as neither did that Judas who betrayed the Lord intend this, that something might thereby be done which pertained to the same salvation of men. Further, if from so evil a work of that Judas the Lord did so good a work that by the blood of his own passion he redeemed us; what wonder if his prophet, of whom he himself says, For he wrote about me (Jn 5:46), signified something good from the evil deed of this Judah, that by his ministry he might teach us? For those deeds of men, the Holy Spirit disposing and inspiring, the narrating prophet collected, whose interposition would not be free from the presignifying of the things he had intended to prophesy: but for signifying certain good things, it makes no difference whether those deeds by which they are signified are good or evil. For what does it matter to me, when I wish to know something by reading, whether I find written in red lead black Ethiopians, and in ink white Gauls? Nevertheless, if I saw, not a writing, but such a painting, I would without doubt reproach it. So in the deeds of men, which are set forth to be imitated or avoided, it makes a great difference whether they are good or evil: but those which are written or spoken for signifying, it matters nothing, in the morals of the doers, what praise or reproach they deserve, provided only they have some necessary fittingness for prefiguring the thing about which it is treated. For just as Caiaphas in the Gospel—as far as concerned his noxious and pernicious mind, finally as far as concerned the very words, if in them you attend to the will of the speaker, by which he was working that the just one be unjustly killed—were surely evil: yet they signified a great good, he not knowing it, when he said, It is expedient that one man die, and the whole nation not perish: and it was said of him, But this he did not say of himself, but, being high priest, he prophesied that Jesus was to die for the nation (Jn 11:50–51). So the deed of Judah, according to his lust, was evil, but, he not knowing it, signified a great good: for of himself indeed he did the evil, but not of himself did he signify the good. But this, which I thought must necessarily be premised, let it avail not only for this deed of Judah, but also for the rest, if any evil works of men occur, by which something good is prophesied by the one narrating.

84. In Tamar, then, the daughter-in-law of Judah, is understood the people of the kingdom of the Jews, to whom, from the tribe of Judah, kings as it were husbands were applied: deservedly her name is interpreted "Bitterness"; for she herself gave the Lord a cup of gall (See Mt 27:34). But two kinds of princes who did not work rightly in the people—one of those who did harm, another of those who profited nothing—are signified in the two sons of Judah: of whom one was malignant or savage before the Lord, the other poured out upon the ground, lest he should give seed to make Tamar fruitful. Nor are there more than two useless kinds of men to the human race: one of those who harm, the other of those unwilling to provide and, if they have any good in this earthly life, losing it, as it were pouring it out upon the ground. And since in evil he is first who harms than he who does not profit, therefore the elder is called malignant; but the following one, who poured out upon the ground. The name too of the elder, who was called Er, is interpreted "of Skin," with such tunics as the first men were clothed in punishment of their condemnation, when sent out of paradise (See Gen 3:21); the name of the following one, who was called Onan, is interpreted "Their Grief": whose, except those to whom one profits nothing, when he has whence he could profit, and loses it on the ground? For a greater evil is that of life taken away, which "of skin" signifies, than of life not helped, which "their grief" signifies: God, nevertheless, is said to have killed both, where it is figured that he took the kingdom from such men. But the third son of Judah, in that he is not joined to that woman, signifies the time from which kings began not to be made from the tribe of Judah for the people of the Jews: and therefore he was indeed a son of Judah, but Tamar did not receive him as husband; because it was the same tribe of Judah, but no one from there now reigned over the people. Whence his name too, that is, Shelah, is interpreted "His Dismissal." But to this signification holy and just men do not pertain, who, although they lived at that time, yet pertain to the New Testament, to which, by prophesying, they were knowingly useful, such as David was. At that time, surely, when Judea had already begun not to have kings from the tribe of Judah, Herod the elder is not to be reckoned among its kings, as the husband of Tamar: for he was a foreigner, nor did he cleave to her by that sacrament of the mystical anointing as by a conjugal covenant; but he lorded it as an outsider, which power he had received from the Romans and from Caesar. So too his sons the tetrarchs, of whom one was called Herod by his father's name, who agreed with Pilate in the passion of the Lord (See Lk 23:12): these foreigners, then, were so far not reckoned in that mystical kingdom of the Jews, that the Jews themselves publicly cried out, gnashing against Christ: We have no king but Caesar (Jn 19:15). Nor was this true, except in that universal dominion of the Romans: for even Caesar was a king not properly of the Jews; but, in order to deny Christ and flatter him, they condemned themselves by such a voice.

85. At that time, then, when the kingdom had already failed from the tribe of Judah, the true Savior our Lord had to come, who would not harm, and would much profit. For thus it had been prophesied: A prince shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up. And he is the expectation of the nations (Gen 49:10). Now at that time too all teaching of the Jews, and the mystical anointing from which they were called christs, had itself failed, according to the prophecy of Daniel. Then came he for whom it was laid up, the expectation of the nations, and the Holy of Holies was anointed (See Dan 9:24–27) with the oil of gladness above his fellows (See Ps 45:8 (44:8)). For he was born in the time of Herod the elder (See Mt 2:1), but suffered under the lesser Herod the tetrarch (See Lk 23:7, 46). The figure of this one, then, coming to the sheep that had perished of the house of Israel (See Mt 15:24), Judah himself bore when he went to shear his sheep in Timnah, which is interpreted "Failing." For the prince had already failed from Judah, and all the teaching and anointing of the Jews, that he might come for whom it was laid up. But he came with his shepherd the Adullamite, whose name was Hirah; and Adullamite is interpreted "Testimony in water." With this testimony plainly the Lord came, having indeed a testimony greater than John (See Jn 5:36); but yet, on account of the weak sheep, he used this testimony in water. For Hirah too, which was the name of that shepherd, is interpreted "the Vision of my Brother." John altogether saw his brother—a brother according to the seed of Abraham, according to the kinship of Mary his mother and Elizabeth his own mother; and the same as his Lord and his God, because, as he himself says, of his fullness he received (See Jn 1:16). He altogether saw him, and therefore among those born of women none greater arose than he (See Mt 11:11): because, of all those foretelling Christ, he himself saw what many just men and Prophets desired to see and did not see (See Mt 13:17). He saluted him from the womb (See Lk 1:44); he recognized him more perfectly from the dove, and therefore, as an Adullamite, he truly bore testimony in water (See Lk 3:21–22). But the Lord came to shear the sheep—that is, to unburden them of their laborious loads, from which the teeth of the Church, praised in the Song of Songs, would be like a flock of shorn sheep (See Song 4:2).

86. Now let Tamar change her dress; for Tamar is also interpreted "Changing": but in her surely let the name of bitterness remain; not of that bitterness in which she ministered gall to the Lord, but of that in which Peter wept bitterly (See Mt 26:75). For Judah too in Latin is "Confession." Let bitterness, then, be mixed with confession, that true penance may be presignified. By this penance the Church, established in all nations, is made fruitful. For it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise on the third day, and that penance and remission of sins be preached in his name through all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Lk 24:46–47). For the harlot's dress itself too is the confession of sins. For Tamar already bears the type of the Church, called from the Gentiles, sitting in this dress at the gate of Enaim, which is interpreted "Fountains." For she ran like a deer to the fountains of waters, to come to the seed of Abraham: there she is made fruitful by one not recognizing her, because it was foretold of her: A people whom I did not know served me (See Ps 18:44 (17:45)). She received in secret the ring, the necklace, and the staff: by vocation she is sealed, by justification adorned, by glorification exalted. For whom he predestined, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified (Rom 8:30). But these things, as I said, are still in secret, where too the conception of holy fruitfulness occurs. But the promised kid is sent as to a harlot, the kid being the reproach of sin; through the same Adullamite, as it were rebuking and saying, Brood of vipers (Mt 3:7). But the reproach of sin did not find her whom the bitterness of confession had changed. But afterward, the signs now made public—of the ring, necklace, and staff—she overcame the rashly judging Jews, whose person Judah himself now bore, who even today say that this is not the people of Christ, nor do we have the seed of Abraham: but, with the most certain proofs of our vocation, justification, glorification brought forth, they will without doubt be confounded, and will confess us to be more justified than themselves. More minutely, and member by member as it were, and point by point, I would search out and discuss these things, as much as the Lord aided my intention, were I not prohibited from this more laborious diligence by the care of finishing this work, which is already more prolix than I would wish.

87. Now I will touch, with as much brevity as I can, on what the sin of David (See 2 Sam 11) signified in prophecy. For the very names, interpreted, sufficiently show what this deed too prefigured. David is interpreted "Strong of Hand," or "Desirable": and what is stronger than that Lion of the tribe of Judah, who conquered the world (See Rev 5:5)? and what more desirable than he of whom the prophet says, he who is desired by all nations shall come (Hag 2:8 (2:7))? Bathsheba is interpreted "Well of Satiety," or "Seventh Well": and whichever of these interpretations of this name we take up for that which we intend to say, it fits well enough. For in the Song of Songs that bride is the Church, who is called a well of living water (Song 4:15): and to this well the name of the sevenfold number is joined, in signification of the Holy Spirit, on account of the reckoning of Pentecost, on which day the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, came (See Acts 2:1–4). For that this same feast day consists of weeks, the Scripture of Tobit too testifies (See Tob 2 (LXX)). But to forty-nine, which is seven times seven, one is added, by which unity is commended. In this reckoning lives that apostolic sentence: Bearing with one another in love, being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:2–5). By the spiritual gift, then—that is, the sevenfold—the Church was made a well of satiety: because there was made in her a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life (Jn 4:14 (4:13)), which whoever has shall not thirst forever (Jn 4:14). But Uriah, who had been her husband, what else does he signify by the interpretation of his name than the devil? To whose most wicked marriage were bound all whom the grace of God frees, that the Church, without spot or wrinkle, may be coupled to her own Savior (See Eph 5:27). For Uriah is interpreted "My Light is God's"; but Hittite, "Cut off," or that he did not stand in the truth (See Jn 8:44), but was cut off from his supernal light, which he had from God, by the merit of his pride; or that, falling, his true powers lost, he yet transforms himself into an angel of light (See 2 Cor 11:14), daring still to say, "My light is God's." Therefore this David indeed sinned grievously and wickedly; which crime of his God too reproved by rebuking through the prophet, and he himself washed away by repenting: yet that one desirable to all nations loved the Church washing herself upon the roof—that is, cleansing herself from the filth of the world, and, by spiritual contemplation, transcending and treading down the house of clay; and, the acquaintance of the first meeting with her begun, afterward killed the devil, utterly separated from her, and coupled her to himself in perpetual marriage. Let us hate sin, then, but not extinguish the prophecy: let us love that David as much as he is to be loved, who freed us from the devil by his mercy; let us love also this David, who healed in himself so grievous a wound of iniquity by the humility of penance.

88. Now about Solomon what shall I say, whom the holy Scripture vehemently reproves and condemns (See 1 Kgs 11), and mentions nothing at all of his penance or of God's indulgence toward him? Nor does it at all occur to me what good, at least in allegory, this lamentable overthrow of his signifies; unless perhaps someone should say that the foreign women, with love of whom he had burned, signify the Churches chosen from the Gentiles. This could perhaps be understood not absurdly, if those women, for Solomon's sake, abandoned their gods and worshiped his God: but since he himself, for their sake, offended his God and worshiped their gods, there is nothing good we can conjecture from this. Yet I do not judge that it signifies nothing; but something evil, as we said about the wife and daughters of Lot. For there appears, in the person of this Solomon, both a marvelous excellence and a marvelous overthrow. What, then, existed in him at diverse times—first good, and afterward evil—this in the Church, in this present world, is shown together at one time. For by his good, I think the good of the Church; but by his evil, the evil of the Church are signified: as, in the unity of one threshing-floor, as in that one man, the good in the grains, the evil in the chaff; as, in the unity of one crop, the good in the wheat, the evil in the tares (See Mt 3:12; 13:30). If indeed, with the things written about him more diligently treated, something more probable on this can shine forth, either to me, or to more learned and better men, yet now we have not so dismissed the matter as that the interrupted series of the connected discourse, hastening to other things, should hinder our intention.

89. But about the prophet Hosea, there is no need for it to be said by me what that command or deed signifies, when the Lord said to Hosea, Go, and take to yourself a wife of fornication, and make children of fornication; since the Scripture itself sufficiently demonstrates whence and why it was said. For it follows: For the land, fornicating, will fornicate away from the Lord. And he went, and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived, and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him: Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Judah, and I will make the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease and turn away. And it shall be, on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she conceived again, and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him: Call her name Without-Mercy, for I will no longer add to have mercy on the house of Israel, but with forgetting I will forget them; and on the house of Judah I will have mercy, and I will save them in the Lord their God, and I will not save them by bow, and by sword, and by war, and by horses, and by horsemen. And she weaned her who was Without-Mercy, and conceived, and bore a son. And the Lord said to him: Call his name Not-My-People, for you are not my people, and I will not be your God. And the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which is without measure, and shall not be numbered; and it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, Sons of the living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and shall set themselves one head, and shall come up from the land, for great is the day of Jezreel. Say to your brothers: My people; and to your sister: She who has obtained mercy (Hos 1:2; 2:1). Since, then, the Lord himself, through the same Scripture, evidently lays open the figure of this command and deed, and since the apostolic writings testify that this prophecy was fulfilled in the preaching of the New Testament: who is there who would dare to say that the command and deed were not for the sake of that for which he himself, in the holy writings, who commanded it, expounds that he commanded it and made the prophet do it? For the apostle Paul says: That he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory; whom also he called, namely us, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles: as he says too in Hosea: I will call Not-My-People my people; and Not-Beloved, beloved: and it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God (Rom 9:23–26). This, then, prophesied about the Gentiles, Paul shows. Whence Peter too, writing to the Gentiles, with the prophet indeed not named, yet inserts his prophecy in his own words, saying: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of acquisition, that you may announce the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his admirable light: who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; who once had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy (1 Pet 2:9–10). From this it evidently appears that what was said through the prophet—And the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which is without measure, and shall not be numbered; and what was consequently added—And it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, Sons of the living God—was said not at all about that Israel which is according to the flesh; but about that of which the Apostle says to the Gentiles, You, then, are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise (Gal 3:29). But since many of that Israel of the Jews too believed and will believe (for thence were the Apostles, thence the so many thousands who were associated with the Apostles in Jerusalem (See Acts 2:41; 4:4), thence the Churches of which he says to the Galatians, But I was unknown by face to the Churches of Judea which are in Christ (Gal 1:22): whence too he so interprets the Lord, called a cornerstone in the Psalms (See Ps 118:22 (117:22)), that he joined two walls in himself, namely of the circumcision and of the uncircumcision: That he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both in one body to God, through the cross slaying the enmities in himself, and, coming, might announce the gospel of peace to those who are far off and to those who are near—that is, to the Gentiles far off and the Jews near; for he himself is our peace, who made both one (Eph 2:11–22)); deservedly this prophet too, setting the children of Judah for the Jews, and the children of Israel for the Gentiles, says: And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together alike, and shall set themselves one head, and shall come up from the land. Whoever, then, contradicts this prophecy, so manifestly declared by the very outcome of things, contradicts most impudently not only the prophetic, but also the apostolic writings; and not only any writings whatever, but even things fulfilled and suffused with the clearest light. Something, then, the deed of Judah perhaps required of more diligent intention, that this woman of fornication—who signifies the Church gathered from the prostitution of the superstitions of the Gentiles—might be recognized in the dress of that woman who was called Tamar: but here, since the Scripture itself lays itself open, and since it is illustrated by the consonant writings of the Apostles, why do we delay here any further, and not now see what remains concerning the servant of God Moses—what those things too signify which Faustus objected?

90. For that, defending his brother, he killed the Egyptian, occurs most easily to anyone, that the devil, injurious to us in this pilgrimage, is killed for us who are defended by the Lord Christ. But that he buried the slain one in the sand (See Exod 2:12), it is manifest that his now dead presence lies hidden in those who have no stable foundation. Whence the Lord builds the Church upon a rock; and those who hear his word and do it he compares to a prudent man who builds his house upon a rock, lest it yield to temptations and fall: but those who hear and do not do, he compares to a fool building upon sand, whose house, when tempted, has a great fall (See Mt 7:24–27).

91. But that he despoiled the Egyptians at the command of the Lord his God (See Exod 3:22; 11:2; 12:35–36), commanding nothing but most justly, what it prefigured I recall having already set down, in certain books which I entitled On Christian Doctrine, as much as then occurred to me: that by the gold and silver and garment of the Egyptians were signified certain teachings which, in the very custom of the Gentiles, are learned with not unprofitable zeal. But whether it signifies this, or that—that from the Gentiles themselves precious souls, like vessels of gold and silver, with their bodies surely, which the garments signify, join themselves to the people of God, that they may be freed together from this world as from Egypt; whether, then, this, or that, or something else was figured from this, it is yet certain to those who read these writings devoutly that not in vain, nor without the foretelling of things to come, were those things commanded, done, and written.

92. Now further, about the wars waged through Moses, it is too long to treat them all. Let it suffice, then, that about that war waged with Amalek (See Exod 17:8–16), I have already above, in this very work in which I reply to Faustus, expounded, as much as seemed sufficient for the business undertaken, what prophecy it sent ahead, what mystery it contained. Now let us see that in which they are accustomed to object the vice of cruelty to Moses, whether the enemies of these writings, or those devoid of all literature: which indeed Faustus did not set down expressly, when he said that he both commanded and did many cruel things. But because I know what they are especially and invidiously accustomed to boast, therefore I myself mentioned this, and defended it above, lest anyone—whether the Manicheans themselves who might wish to be corrected, or any other of the ignorant or impious—should suppose there was any crime in that deed. But now it must be asked what prophetic signification it also had, that he commanded many of those who had fabricated an idol for themselves while he was absent to be killed without any distinction of any kinship (See Exod 32). It is easy to understand that the killing of those men signifies the persecution of such vices as those by which they slipped down to that idolatry. For the Psalm commands us to rage against such vices, when it says, Be angry, and do not sin (Ps 4:5 (4:4)). The Apostle commands us to rage against such vices, when he says, Mortify your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, wantonness, evil concupiscence, and avarice, which is the service of idols (Col 3:5).

93. But what that which he first did means—that he burned the very calf with fire, and broke it into tiny pieces, and scattered it into water, and gave it to the people to drink—requires a greater intention of searching out the signification. For if he broke the tablets, which he had received written by the finger of God—that is, by the working of the Holy Spirit—because he judged those to whom he should read them unworthy: if, finally, that that calf might be utterly abolished among them, he burned it, ground it, scattered it in water, and submerged it, why did he also give this to the people to drink? Whom would this deed not stir to search out and understand the prophetic signification? Let it then occur now to intent minds, as it were the body of the devil in the calf—that is, men in all nations, to whom for these sacrileges the head, that is, the author, is the devil. Golden, for this reason, because the rites of idolatry seem instituted as it were by wise men: of whom the Apostle says, For, knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks; but they became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened: saying they were wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of serpents (Rom 1:21–23). From this as it were wisdom that golden calf, such figments as the very chief men of the Egyptians too, and as it were learned men, were accustomed to adore. By this calf, then, was signified the whole body—that is, the whole society of the Gentiles given over to idolatry. This sacrilegious society the Lord Christ burns with that fire of which he says in the Gospel, I came to send fire upon the earth (Lk 12:49): so that, since there is no one who hides himself from its heat (See Ps 19:7 (18:7)), while the Gentiles believe in him, the diabolical form in them may be dissolved by the fire of his virtue. Then that whole body is broken into pieces—that is, torn from that fusion of evil conspiracy, it is humbled by the word of truth: and, broken into pieces, it is put into water, that the Israelites—that is, the preachers of the Gospel—may transfer them by Baptism into their own members, that is, into the Lord's body. To which Israelites, concerning these same Gentiles, it was said to Peter, Kill and eat (Acts 10:13). If "Kill and eat," why not also "Break and drink"? Thus that calf, through the fire of zeal and the edge of the word and the water of Baptism, was absorbed rather by those whom it had tried to absorb.

94. If, then, these passages of the Scriptures too—about which the heretics slander those same Scriptures—when searched out, and in a manner interrogated, answer that, the more obscure they seem, the more marvelous treasures of mysteries lie hidden in them; how much more ought the blasphemous mouths of the impious to be wholly struck dumb, when they are stopped up by the most open truth, against which, with their breath choked, they do not find what to mutter; and the wretches prefer to have their throats stopped by its manifestation than their breast filled by its sweetness? All these things, then, sound forth Christ; that head which has now ascended into heaven, and this body of his which labors on earth unto the end, the whole intention of those writing the truly sacred writings brought to birth: nor is anything to be believed narrated in the connected text of the prophetic Books which does not signify something of things to come; except the things which are set down for this, that from them, in a manner, those things may be linked together which foretell that king and his people, whether by proper or by figured speeches or deeds. For just as in lyres and musical instruments of this kind, not all the things that are touched indeed resound something tuneful, but only the strings; yet the rest in the whole body of the lyre were fabricated for this, that there might be where they should be bound, whence and to where those strings should be stretched which the artist, about to tune and strike for the sweetness of the melody, plays: so in these prophetic narrations, which from the deeds of men are chosen by the prophetic spirit, either they already sound something by the signification of things to come; or, if they signify nothing of the kind, they are interposed for this, that there may be whence those signifying things, as it were sounding ones, may be connected.

95. But if the heretics are unwilling to accept these allegorical narrations of deeds, as they are expounded by us, or even contend that they signify nothing but what they properly sound; one must not wrestle with men who say, "It does not taste to my palate what you say tastes to yours": provided only that the things which are divinely commanded are either believed or understood either to form morals and piety, or to signify something figuratively, or both rather than neither: provided only that the very things which are understood as figuratively said or done are referred to those same good morals and piety. And on this account, even if to the Manicheans, or to any others, our understanding, or reasoning, or opinion about these figures of deeds is displeasing; let this suffice, that our fathers, to whom God bears testimony of good life and of obedience in his precepts, are defended by that rule of truth which cannot be displeasing except to depraved and distorted hearts; and that that Scripture, to which the perversity of that error is hostile, in whatever deeds of men—which it either praised or reproved or only narrated and set forth to us to be judged—itself persists inculpable and venerable.

96. But what more useful or healthful could be provided and looked to for those who devoutly read or hear those sacred writings, than that not only praiseworthy men should be set forth in them to be imitated, and reprehensible ones to be avoided; but also certain declinings and falls of the good into evil, whether likewise corrected again they return to the way, or remain irrevocable; and again certain changes of the evil and advances into good, whether to persevere, or to relapse again into their former state; so that neither may the just be lifted into pride by security, nor the wicked be hardened against the medicine by despair? But those deeds of men which pertain neither to imitation nor to avoidance, and yet are found in holy Scripture, are either set down for that connection by which, on certain occasions, one arrives at necessary things; or by the very fact that they seem superfluous, they sufficiently admonish that in them must be sought the oracle of some mystical signification. For we are not speaking of those books in which no, or few and not many, things most openly foretold by the prophetic spirit—now, too, with the very things fulfilled—attest the divine authority with the most faithful and most illustrious light of truth: so that whoever supposes that they spoke anything superfluously or as it were foolishly is altogether senseless, who sees not only all kinds of men and talents subjected to them, but also reads this foretold by them, and recognizes it accomplished.

97. If, then, someone reading the deed of David, of which he repented with the Lord rebuking and threatening, should make for himself from it a fuel for sinning, is that Scripture to be blamed; and not rather is he to be condemned the more severely, the more he wished to abuse, for wounding or killing himself, that thing which was written for healing and freeing? For because men, fallen into sin, either through pride neglect the medicine of penance, or through distrust of recovering salvation and obtaining pardon perish utterly, an example was set forth of so great a man, by which the sick may be healed, not by which those who are healthy may be wounded. For it is no fault of medicine, if either the insane kill themselves, or the malignant kill others, with medical instruments.

98. But yet these our fathers, the Patriarchs and Prophets, to whom that Scripture bears so illustrious a testimony of sanctity and piety—which Scripture none denies to have been divinely dispensed for the salvation of the human race, except whoever either does not know it, or has lost all sense of rational consideration—even if they had been lustful and cruel, as the error, or rather the fury, of the Manicheans accuses them: would they not even so be shown to be better, I do not say than their Elect, but than even that god of theirs? Is it not better for a man to wallow with a concubine, a woman, than for the most sincere light to be defiled by mingling itself with darkness? Behold, a man, for the sake of avarice and the belly, lying that his wife was his sister, sold her for the intercourse of others: how much worse and more execrable is he who, feigning his nature accommodated to the lust of those desiring it, subjected it to them, for nothing, to be polluted and corrupted! Now he who even knowingly lay with his daughters, does he not perpetrate less evil than he who mingles his members with the lusts of all such and worse basenesses? For what such thing is committed by the unclean and wicked, where your god, Manicheans, is not polluted with all basenesses? Finally, if Jacob truly, as Faustus says, wandered like a goat among four wives with foul concupiscence, bearing no care of offspring, but of wanton pleasure alone; how much less wretched would he be than your god, who would not only suffer all that disgrace of lust in him and in his four wives, congealed with all their bodies and motions; but in the very goat, to which the filthy man compared that man, endures all that generative motion and heat, and, everywhere mixed in a base condition, is inflamed in the he-goat, sown in the she-goat, generated in the kid? And on this account, even if Judah existed not only as a fornicator, but even as a knowing and nefarious incestor of his daughter-in-law, in the lust of that incest too your god would cleave, would be defiled, would burn. But David repented of his iniquity, in that he loved another's wife and ordered her husband to be killed: but when will your god repent, that, loved by the tartarean male and female race of the princes of darkness, he granted his members to their lust; and killed, not the husband whose spouse he had loved, but his own sons, in the members of the demons, by which demons he himself had been loved? But even if David had not repented, nor by such medicine recovered the health of righteousness, even so he would have stood better than this god of the Manicheans. For let us suppose this one, by that one deed, and by however many others of the kind, how many one man could commit; but that one, in all such deeds of all men, is convicted of being defiled and polluted by that mingling of his members. And the prophet Hosea is accused by Faustus: who, if, captivated by foul concupiscence, he had loved and married a harlot, you surely declare the souls of both, both the wanton lover and the obscene harlot, to be parts and members and the nature of your god: that harlot, then—for why should I beat about with words, and not say it plainly?—that harlot would be your god. For you cannot say that, with the sanctity of his nature preserved and uncorrupted, he fell upon that harlot's body not bound but only present: but you confess both that these members of your god are most defiled, and that on this account they need a great purgation. That harlot, then, of whom you dare to accuse the man of God, would be your god, even if she were not changed for the better into a chaste marriage: or, if you are unwilling, you do not at least deny that that soul of the harlot is a particle of your god, though the least. By this, then, he is already better than your god, since she would be one single harlot, but he, by the condition of that mingling of his with the whole race of darkness, is prostituted in all harlots, finally is wallowed, dissolved, bound, in all males and females widely and variously fornicating and corrupting themselves, again to be wallowed, dissolved, bound in their offspring, until at the last globe the most unclean part of your god is led forth, like an inexpiable harlot. These evils, surely, these basenesses, these disgraces your god could not remove from his members, and, compelled by the necessity of a monstrous enemy, came to these things: for he could not destroy the injurious and violent one with his own citizens or parts unharmed. How much better, then, is he who, the Egyptian killed, defended his unharmed brother, whom Faustus accuses with marvelous vanity, and does not look at his own god with a more marvelous blindness? How much better that he himself should have taken away vessels of gold and silver from the nation of the Egyptians, than that his members should be plundered by the nation of darkness? And yet, when he himself had waged so wretched a war, his worshipers object to the servant of our God that he waged wars, in which he always, with all his own, triumphed as victor over his enemies—who, what captive man or woman, while Moses warred, could be led from the people of Israel? Which your god too, if he could have done, would surely have done. This, then, is not to accuse the wicked, but to envy the more fortunate. But what cruelty of Moses was it, that he avenged with the sword upon a people that had grievously sinned against God? Of which sin, however, offering himself for them even to the divine vengeance, he begged pardon. Nevertheless, even if he had done this too not mercifully but cruelly, even so he would be better than your god. For he would in no way afterward, if he had conquered, himself condemn any of his innocent and obedient ones, if he had been sent to break a wedge of the enemy and had been captured: which this god is going to do with his own part, which he will fix in the globe, because it obeyed him commanding, because it went forth into the hostile wedges, with its own death set before it, for the salvation of his kingdom. But, he says, in this series of ages, now mingled and congealed with evils, it did not obey the precepts. Let us ask why. If by its own will, true fault and just punishment: but if now the will is guilty, there is no nature contrary unto sinning, and therefore all the deceit of the Manicheans is convicted and overturned. But if, oppressed by the enemy whither it was sent, if overcome by another's evil which it had not been able to resist, the punishment is unjust and a great cruelty. But the necessity of god is brought forward for excuse. Let those worship such a god who are unwilling to worship God. Surely, what must be confessed, even his very worshipers, although by worshiping such a god they are most wicked, are nevertheless better than he, because at least they exist: but he is nothing, except a fiction of falsehood and a thought of vanity. But now let us see the rest of Faustus's clever ravings.

1. FAUSTUS said: As I was once disputing, a certain one of the numerous crowd, answering, said: Do you accept Jesus born of Mary? To whom I said: Which Jesus do you mean? For there were several Jesuses among the Hebrews: one indeed the son of Nun, the disciple of Moses (See Exod 33:11; Sir 46:1); another the son of Jozadak the high priest (Hag 1:1); likewise another who was called the son of David (See Rom 1:1–3), but another the Son of God (See Mk 1:1): which of these, then, born of Mary, do you ask me whether I accept? Surely, he said, the Son of God. To whom I said: And on whose authority, or by whose teaching, am I to accept this? But he: Matthew's, he said. To whom again I said: What, then, did Matthew write? And he: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and so on (See Mt 1:1). Then I said: I had supposed you were going to say, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the Son of God"; and I had prepared myself to forestall it: but since you have now faithfully recalled the chapter, you need only be admonished to consider what you have recited. For Matthew does not here confess that he had set out to write the generation of the Son of God, but of the son of David.

2. So that, to believe this man for the moment as he says, the son of David will be for me the one born of Mary: but still, of the Son of God, in this whole text of the generation no mention is made, up to the baptism, that is; and in vain do you heap a slander upon the writer, as though he shut up the Son of God in a woman's womb. But this man cries out, as it seems, and by his very title clears himself altogether of this sacrilege, declaring that he wrote that one sprung from that stock was a son of David, not the Son of God. For Jesus indeed, the one who is the Son of God, if you consider the mind and purpose of this writer, he does not so much wish us to take as procreated from the virgin Mary, as made at some time through baptism at the streams of the Jordan. For there he says that the one whom David at the outset designated a son was baptized by John and made at some time the Son of God (See Mt 3:16–17)—after about thirty years, that is, according to the testimony of Luke, where the voice too was then heard, saying to him, You are my Son; today I have begotten you (Lk 3:22–23). You see, then, that what was born of Mary, as this man thinks, thirty years before, is not the Son of God himself, but that which was made afterward from the baptism at the Jordan—that is, the new man, as in us when we believe, converted to God from the error of Gentilism: which thing itself, however, I do not know whether it agrees well enough with that faith which you call catholic; but for the moment so it seems to Matthew, if these things are his. For nowhere in Mary's childbearings is that read to have been said, You are my Son, today I have begotten you; or, This is my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: but in his expiation at the Jordan. And if you too believe just as it is written, you will indeed already be a Matthean; for so I must say it: but catholic by no means. For we know the catholic faith; which is as far distant from this profession of Matthew as it is far from the truth. Since indeed your creed runs thus, that you believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, who was born of the virgin Mary: it is yours, then, to take the Son of God from Mary; Matthew's, from the Jordan; ours, from God: and on this account Matthew, if these are for certain his, is as contrary to you in this profession of his, as to us; except that he was found a little more prudent than you, in that he ascribed the origin from the female sex to the son of David rather than to the Son of God. Wherefore of two things you must confess one: either that this is not Matthew, who seems to assert these things; or that you do not hold the apostolic faith.

3. But we—although no one at all should cast us down from this opinion, of taking the Son of God from God—yet, that we may grant much to imprudence, that we may be driven even to believe false things, Jesus the Son of God will have been made for us from the Jordan rather than born from a woman's womb. Although not even that very one whom Mary bore, if there was any, would rightly be called a son of David, unless it be established that he was sown by the father Joseph. Which, because you deny, you must necessarily confess this too, that not even he is the son of David. Since indeed the generation is drawn from Abraham to David, and from David all the way to Joseph, through all the Hebrew fathers, namely: of whom, because Jesus was not conceived, as is read, neither will he be the son of David; and far insane is he who, the one whom he was going to say was born of Mary without the intercourse of Joseph, set down at the beginning to be the son of David. Since, then, not even he who is begotten of Mary is rightly called the son of David, because he was not born of Joseph; how much more the Son of God?

4. Accordingly, neither is the origin of the virgin herself shown to have been from that tribe from which David is established to be—I mean Judah, from which were the kings of the Jews—but from the tribe of Levi, from which the priests: which is plain, because she had as father a certain priest named Joachim, of whom, however, no mention is made anywhere in this generation. How, then, will Mary be said to pertain to this lineage of Davidic kinship, in which you see her have neither father nor husband? And on this account neither will whoever is born of her be the son of David: unless you so apply this mother of his to Joseph that she be proved either his daughter or his spouse.

5. AUGUSTINE replied: The catholic faith—and likewise the apostolic—is that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is both the Son of God according to the divinity, and the son of David according to the flesh: which we so prove from the evangelical and apostolic writings that no one can contradict our proofs, unless one who contradicts the writings themselves: not as this Faustus set forth for himself, that I know not who said a few words, and afterward brought forth no testimonies against the cunning shifts of the same versatile Faustus. Which, when I have done it, nothing will remain for him to answer, except that by which he tries expressly to mock and evade the force of the most manifest truth in the holy Scriptures, namely, by answering that those things are false and inserted into the divine codices. Which madness, and frenzied presumption and audacity, I have already above in this work refuted, as much as seemed sufficient: nor is it needful to repeat the same, that we may also consider the measure of the discourse. What need is there, then, to seek and gather testimonies scattered through all the Scriptures, by which we might prove against this man, in the books of the greatest and divine authority, that the same is called the only-begotten Son of God, always God with God, who is also called the son of David on account of the form of a servant taken from the virgin Mary, the spouse of Joseph? Now for the moment, since he wished to dispute about Matthew, and the whole book of Matthew cannot be inserted by me into this discourse, let whoever wishes read, and see how Matthew, by narrating, leads the one whom he says his parents enumerate to be the son of David all the way to the passion and resurrection; nor does he say that any other than this same one was conceived and born of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. To which thing he applies also a testimony from the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted: God with us (Isa 7:14; Mt 1:23). And that this same one, baptized by John, heard from heaven: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Mt 3:17): concerning whom it had already been said, from the virgin's childbearing, "God with us." Unless perhaps it seemed to Faustus less to be called God than to be called the Son of God. For from this he tried to conjecture that it seemed to Matthew that he was made the Son of God only from the baptism, because there the voice from heaven was made, This is my Son: when the same evangelist had already above applied the divine testimony from the prophet, where the very childbearing of the virgin was called "God with us."

6. This wretched, doting babbler we ought indeed to look at and observe, not omitting, where he could, to spread before the reader of his empty talk fogs of falsehood even from the testimonies of the Scriptures: as he said of Abraham, that he had not believed God promising him a son from Sarah, when he lay with the handmaid; though Scripture testifies that the childbearing of Sarah had not yet been promised to him (Gen 16:4; 17:17): or that he lied that his wife was his sister; though he nowhere read Sarah's lineage in those writings to which credence is to be given on this matter (Gen 12:13; 20:2, 12): and about his son Isaac, that he too falsely said Rebecca was his sister; though her lineage is there openly written (See Gen 26:7; 24): and about Jacob, that there was a daily contest among his four wives, which should first seize him, coming from the field, for intercourse; which he is convicted of having nowhere there read at all. Behold what kind of man boasts that he hates lying writers of the divine books, who dares even concerning the evangelical summit of so great authority, known to all, so to lie that he wishes it to be thought that not Matthew—lest he be pressed down by the weight of the apostolic name—but I know not who else, under the name of Matthew, wrote concerning Christ what he is unwilling to believe, and what by slanderous craft he tries to refute.

7. Thus, then, it was said from heaven over the water of the Jordan, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; just as it was said also on the mountain (See Mt 17:5). For not because there too that voice itself sounded from heaven was he not the Son of God before: since from the virgin's womb he took the form of a servant, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal to God (Phil 2:6–7). Finally, the same apostle Paul in another place says most openly: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law (See Gal 4:4)—calling the woman a "woman" by the custom of Hebrew speech. He himself, then, is the Son of God, who is also the Lord of David according to the divinity; and the same is the son of David, of the seed of David according to the flesh. And if it did not profit us to believe this, the same Apostle would not so attentively commend it to Timothy, saying: Remember that Christ Jesus rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel (2 Tim 2:8). Against which gospel whoever announces another, that he be anathema, with great care he admonished the faithful (See Gal 1:8–9).

8. What, then, should now disturb a follower of the holy Gospel, that Christ, born of the virgin without the intercourse of Joseph, is nonetheless called the son of David, since the evangelist Matthew leads the series of generations not all the way to Mary, but all the way to Joseph? First, because, as her husband, his person was the more to be honored on account of the male sex: for not because he was not mingled in intercourse is he therefore not a husband, since Matthew himself narrates that Mary was called his spouse by the angel—he who narrates that she conceived not by his intercourse, but of the Holy Spirit. But if not Matthew the apostle wrote these true things, but someone else under his name, as the Manicheans suppose, wrote them as false; would he so contradict himself in things most open and woven together so closely, that, the one whom he called the son of David, born of the virgin Mary without the intercourse of any man, enumerating his parents step by step, he should lead all the way, without any reason, to the one whom he himself had said was not mingled with Mary? For if one were to enumerate the forefathers of Christ from David to Joseph, calling him the son of David, and another were to say that he was born of the virgin Mary without the intercourse of any man, and not call him the son of David; not even so ought we at once to suppose that they spoke these things contrary to each other, so that either both or one of them were convicted of falsehood. For we ought to consider that it could be that both spoke true things, so that both Joseph was called the husband of Mary, having her as spouse continently, not by intercourse, but by affection; not by the mingling of bodies, but by the coupling—which is dearer—of minds: and that therefore the husband of the virgin mother of Christ ought not to be separated from the series of the parents of Christ; and that Mary herself drew some vein of blood from the stock of David, so that the flesh of Christ, even procreated from a virgin, could not be without the seed of David. But since one and the same narrator says both, commends both, both that Joseph was the husband of Mary and the virgin mother of Christ, and that Christ was of the seed of David and that Joseph was in the series of Christ's forefathers from David: what remains for one to believe who wishes to believe the divine Gospel rather than the fables of heretics, except both that Mary was not foreign to the kinship of David, and that she was not in vain called the spouse of Joseph, on account of the order of sex and the confederation of minds, although he was not mingled with her in the flesh; and that Joseph, rather on account of his male dignity, ought not to be separated from the order of those generations, lest by this very thing he seem separated from that woman to whom the affection of mind joined him; and lest the faithful of Christ should reckon that—which is the carnal mingling of spouses—so great a thing in marriage that they did not believe people to be spouses without it: but should rather learn that faithful marriages cleave to the members of Christ much more intimately, the more they could imitate the parents of Christ?

9. We, then, believe that Mary too was in the kinship of David, because we believe those Scriptures which say both, that Christ was of the seed of David according to the flesh (See Rom 1:3; 2 Tim 2:8), and that his mother Mary was, not by lying with a man, but a virgin (See Mt 1:18; Lk 1:27). Whoever, therefore, says that Mary did not pertain to the blood relationship of David, it is manifest that he struggles against the so excellent authority of these Scriptures: let him, then, prove that she did not pertain to the seed of David, and show this, not from any writings whatever, but from ecclesiastical, canonical, catholic ones. For others have with us no weight of authority on these matters: for those are the ones which the Church, spread throughout the whole world, receives and holds—the Church which was even prophesied through them; and, as it was promised, so rendered. And on this account that which Faustus set down concerning the generation of Mary, that she had a father from the tribe of Levi, a certain priest named Joachim, because it is not canonical, does not bind me: but even if I believed this, I would rather say that Joachim himself somehow pertained to the blood of David, and that somehow he was adopted from the tribe of Judah into the tribe of Levi, either he himself or some forefather of his, or at least was so born in the tribe of Levi that he drew some blood relationship from the stock of David: just as the same Faustus confesses it could have happened that Mary was of the tribe of Levi, who nevertheless, it is established, was handed over to a husband who was of the stock of David—that is, of the tribe of Judah; and thus he says it could be taken that Christ was the son of David, if Mary had been the daughter of Joseph. Accordingly, if the daughter of Joseph had married into the tribe of Levi, not absurdly would whoever was born of her, even in the tribe of Levi, be called the son of David: so, if the mother of that Joachim whom Faustus mentions as the father of Mary, of the tribe of Judah and the lineage of David, married into the tribe of Levi, not undeservedly are Joachim too, and Mary, and the son of Mary even so truly declared to be of the seed of David. This, then, or some such thing, I would rather believe, if I were held by the authority of that apocryphal writing in which Joachim is read as the father of Mary, than that the Gospel should lie, in which it is written both that Jesus Christ the Son of God our Savior was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and procreated through the virgin Mary. It suffices for us, then, that the Scriptures which say this, and which we believe, cannot be convicted of any falsehood by their enemies.

10. Let him not, then, say to me in turn: "Even if I do not show that Mary was not of the kinship of David, do you show that she was from there." For this I show by a most clear and plainly most strong proof, that the Scripture of most firmly established authority both says that Christ was of the seed of David, and that his mother was the virgin Mary, without anyone's intercourse. But how reverently Faustus seemed to be a detester of a certain as it were baseness, when he said: "In vain do you heap a slander upon the writer, as though he shut up the Son of God in a woman's womb!" The catholic faith plainly, which believes Christ the Son of God born according to the flesh of a virgin, in no way so shuts up the same Son of God in a woman's womb, as though he were not outside, as though he deserted the administration of heaven and earth, as though he withdrew from the Father: but you, Manicheans, with that heart by which you can think nothing but corporeal phantasms, do not at all grasp these things—how the Word of God, the Power and Wisdom of God, both remaining in himself and with the Father, and ruling the whole creation, reaches mightily from end to end, and disposes all things sweetly (See Wis 8:1). In the marvelous and ineffable ease of which disposition he disposed for himself a mother too on earth, and, for the sake of his servants to be freed from the slavery of corruption, took in her the form of a servant—that is, a mortal body; showed it taken; and, when it was shown and laid low by death, raised it up by the resurrection, and, like a temple destroyed, built it again. You, nevertheless, who dread to believe these things as if sacrilegious, shut up the members of your god, not in the womb of a virgin, but in the wombs of all carnal females, from elephants to flies. Or does the true Christ therefore seem to you more vile, because we say the Word was so made flesh in the virgin's womb that, by no change of himself, remaining inviolably in his proper nature, he fitted to himself a man as a temple; and is therefore your god dear to you, because, bound by so many chains of flesh and defiled in that part in which he is also to be fixed in the globe, he begs for relief without cause, or even, utterly oppressed, is not allowed to beg?

1. FAUSTUS said: Why do you deny that man is made by God? We do not by any means deny that man is made by God; but we ask who, and when, and how he is made. Since indeed, according to the Apostle, there are two men, one of whom he sometimes calls the outer, but for the most part the earthly, sometimes also the old; but the other he calls the inner and heavenly and new (See Rom 6:7; 1 Cor 15; 2 Cor 4; Eph 3–4; Col 3). Which of these, then, is made by God, we ask. Since indeed there are two times of our birth too: one, that by which nature brought us, entangled in carnal chains, into this light; the other, when the truth, having converted us from error, regenerated us to itself, initiated unto faith. Which time of the second birth Jesus, signifying in the Gospel, says: Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Which, when Nicodemus, little understanding, hesitated at, and inquired how it could happen—for a man could not enter into his mother's womb and be born again—Jesus, answering him, said: Unless one is born of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And it follows: What is born of the flesh is flesh; and what is born of the spirit is spirit (Jn 3:3–6). Wherefore, if even birth is not that alone by which we are begotten in the body, but also that other by which we are reborn in the spirit, it is a no less concern to ask this very thing too: in which of them God makes us. The manner of being born too is twofold: one proper to fury and intemperance, by which we are basely and through lust sown by our begetters; the other of honesty and sanctimony, by which in Christ Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, under the teachings of good men, we are disciplined unto faith: whence too every religion, and especially the Christian, calls the untaught to the sacrament as infants. Which the Apostle too, signifying, says: My little children, of whom I am again in travail, until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19). Wherefore it is no longer asked whether God makes man; but when, and which one, and how he makes him: for if, when we are formed in the womb, as it pleases nearly the Gentiles and the Jews and you yourselves, God then forms us to his image, then he both makes us old and creates us through fury and lust, which I do not know whether it befits his divinity. But if, when we believe and are converted to a better state of life, then we are formed by God, as it pleases nearly Christ and his Apostles and us; surely he both makes us new, and makes us honestly and purely: than which what is more consonant or more befitting his holy and venerable majesty? But if you too do not spurn the authority of Paul, from him we will show you which one, and when, and how God makes man. He says to the Ephesians: That you put off, according to the former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted by the desires of error: but be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who according to God was created in the righteousness and holiness of truth (Eph 4:22–24). You see, then, when man is created to the image of God; you see here both another man shown, and another birth, and another manner of being born. For when he says, "Put off and put on," he signifies surely the time of believing: but when he testifies that the new man is created by God, then he indicates that the old is neither from him nor formed according to him. And when he goes on, saying that the former is made in holiness and righteousness and truth, then he designates and demonstrates that other manner of birth which I said is far dissimilar to this one, which sowed our bodies by the furious embraces of our begetters; and which he also shows is not from God, when he showed that one alone to be from God. And likewise to the Colossians he says the same thing again: Strip off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God, according to the image of him who created him in you. And from this too, then, he not only shows that the new man is the one whom God makes, but taught when also and by what manner he is formed, that is: "In the knowledge of God," by which is signified the time of believing. And further: "According to the image," he says, "of him who created him": so that from this it is clear that the old man is neither the image of God, nor formed by him. For that too which follows, saying, Where there is no male and female, Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian (Col 3:9–11), more and more shows that this birth, which made us males and females, Greeks and Jews, Scythians and barbarians, is not that in which God works when he forms man; but that which, stripping us of all variety of nations and sex and condition, renders us one, after the likeness of him who is one, that is, Christ: as the same Apostle again says: As many as were baptized in Christ have put on Christ: there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female, there is neither slave nor free; but all are one in Christ (Gal 3:27–28). Therefore man is then made by God, when he is made one out of many, not when out of one he is divided into many. But the first birth, that is, the corporeal, divided us; the second unites, the intelligible and divine: and therefore most rightly we have thought this one to be ascribed to the nature of the body, but that one to the supernal majesty. Wherefore the same Apostle again says to the Corinthians: In Christ Jesus, through the gospel, I begot you (1 Cor 4:15): and to the Galatians, of himself: When it pleased him who set me apart from my mother's womb, that he might reveal his Son in me, that I might announce him among the Gentiles, immediately I did not consent to flesh and blood (Gal 1:15–16). You see, then, that everywhere he asserts that we are formed by God in this second birth of ours, the spiritual one only; not in that former obscene and shameful one, which conceived and formed and bore us in the maternal womb no more excellently or cleanly than the other animals. About which matter, if you are willing to consider, you will find that in this part we differ from you not so much in profession as in understanding. For if it pleases you to attribute this to the old and outer and earthly man, that he is formed by God; but we, on the contrary, would give this to the heavenly, and attribute it to the inner and new man: nor that rashly or presumptuously, but learning it from Christ and his Apostles, who are shown to have first taught these things in the world.

2. AUGUSTINE replied: The apostle Paul indeed wishes the inner man to be understood in the spirit of the mind, but the outer in the body and this mortal life: yet that he ever called both of these together two men is nowhere read in his writings; but one, whom God made wholly—that is, both that which is inner and that which is outer: but he made him to his image only according to that which is inner, not only incorporeal but also rational, which is not in beasts. Not, then, did he make one man to his image, and another not to his image: but because both this inner and outer together are one man, this one man he made to his image, not according to that which has a body and corporeal life, but according to that which has a rational mind, by which he may know God, and by the same excellence of reason be set before all irrational things. But that inner one Faustus grants is made by God: "When," he says, "he is renewed in the knowledge of God, according to the image of him who created him." This apostolic sentence I plainly acknowledge (Col 3:10); why does he himself not acknowledge the other: God set the members, each one of them, in the body as he willed (1 Cor 12:18)? Behold, God is preached even as the maker of the outer man by the same Apostle: why does he choose from there what he thinks is for him, and is silent about, or rejects, what cuts off the fables of the Manicheans? Likewise, when the same Paul discoursed about the earthly and heavenly man, distinguishing between the mortal and the immortal, between what we are in Adam and what we shall be in Christ, from the very Law, from the very book and from the very passage he applied the testimony of the earthly—that is, the animal body—where it is written that God made the earthly man too. For when he was treating how the dead will rise, and with what body they will come, when he had given the likeness from the seeds of grain, that bare grains are sown, and God gives them a body as he willed, to each seed its own proper body: where likewise he overturns the error of Mani, who says that the nation of darkness, not God, creates both grains and herbs and all roots and shrubs; and believes that God is rather bound in these forms and kinds of things, than that he works any of these: when, then, against the sacrilegious vanity of Mani he had said these things too, he came to the differences of fleshes: Not all flesh, he says, is the same flesh: thence to those of heavenly and earthly bodies, thence to the change of our body by which it can become spiritual and heavenly: It is sown, he says, in dishonor, it will rise in glory: it is sown in weakness, it will rise in power: it is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body. And thence, wishing to show the origin of the animal body: If there is, he says, an animal body, there is also a spiritual; as it is written: The first man Adam was made into a living soul (1 Cor 15:35–45). But this is written in Genesis (See Gen 2:7), where it is narrated how God made man, and animated the body which he had formed from the earth. But by the old man the Apostle means nothing else than the old life, which is in sin, in which one lives according to Adam: of whom he says, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). Therefore that whole man, that is, in both his inner and outer part, grew old on account of sin, and was assigned to the punishment of mortality: but he is renewed now according to the inner man, where he is reformed according to the image of his Creator, putting off unrighteousness—that is, the old man; and putting on righteousness—that is, the new man. But then, when the spiritual body, which is sown an animal one, will rise, the outer too will receive the dignity of the heavenly condition: so that the whole that was created may be recreated, and the whole that was made may be remade, by him recreating who created, and remaking who made. Which he briefly explains where he says: The body indeed is dead on account of sin, but the spirit is life on account of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you; he who raised Christ from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you (Rom 8:10–11). For who, instructed in catholic truth, is unaware that according to the body some men are male, others female, not according to the spirit of the mind, in which we are renewed according to the image of God? Yet that God made both, again the same Apostle is witness, where he says: Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord: for as the woman is from the man, so too the man is through the woman; but all things are from God (1 Cor 11:11–12). What does the inept deceit of men estranged from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them on account of the blindness of their heart (See Eph 4:18) say to these things, except: "In the apostolic writings what we wish is true, what we do not wish is false"? So rave the Manicheans: but let them come to their senses, and not be Manicheans. Of whom if it be asked (since they confess the inner man is renewed to the image of God, and bring forth this testimony even of their own accord: but then, says Faustus, God makes man, when the inner is renewed in the knowledge of God), whether he himself made him who remakes him, he himself founded him who renews him; they will answer: He himself. To which answer of theirs, if we add, asking when he formed him whom he now reforms: they will seek where to hide themselves, lest they be compelled to lay open the disgrace of their fable. For they do not say that he was formed or founded or instituted by God, but that a part of his substance—plainly his own—was sent against his enemies: nor that he grew old by sin, but that he was captivated and deformed by his enemies through necessity, and the rest which it is now tedious to say. For there too they mention a first man—not the one whom the Apostle calls earthly, from the earth (See 1 Cor 15:47), but I know not what one of their own, leaping forth from the ark of lies: about whom Faustus is altogether silent, when he had set himself a question about man; fearing lest in some way it become known to those against whom he disputes.

1. FAUSTUS said: Has God an end, or is he infinite? If your prayer does not deceive, which says, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (See Exod 3:15), God has an end: unless perhaps this one about whom you question is one, and the one you pray to is another: otherwise the boundary of circumcision, which marks off Abraham and Isaac and Jacob from the society of the other nations (See Gen 17:9–14), bounds also the power of God himself with respect to them. But whose power is bounded, he himself too is not without an end. Finally, you do not even make mention in this prayer of the ancients who were before Abraham—I mean Enoch, and Noah, and Shem (See Gen 5), and the rest like them, whom you do not deny to have been just in uncircumcision, but because they lacked the mark of circumcision, you are unwilling that he be even their God, but of Abraham alone and his seed. Therefore, if God is one and infinite, what does this so diligent and solicitous caution of your invocation mean, that, not content to have named God, you add also "whose"—of Abraham, namely, and Isaac and Jacob: as though your prayer would go astray in some throng of gods, or suffer shipwreck, unless it sailed to the sign of Abraham? And that the Jews indeed pray thus is, for a certain reason, not absurd, inasmuch as they are circumcised; for thus they designate that they invoke the God of circumcision, on account of the gods of the uncircumcision: but why you do this very thing, I little understand; since you by no means bear the sign that Abraham had, whose God you invoke. For truly, as may be understood, for the sake of mutual recognition—lest, namely, they should stray from each other in turn—the Jews and the God of the Jews seem to have imposed such marks on each other reciprocally: and he indeed marked them with the obscene character of circumcision, by which, wherever in the lands they may be, wherever among the nations, they may yet be known by circumcision to be his; but they in turn marked their own God by the surname of their parents, by which, wherever he himself may be, in however great a throng of gods, when he has heard "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," he may at once recognize that he is invoked. Which is wont generally to be done in the case of many having one name, that none of them, when called, answers, unless the surname is heard. For so too the shepherd and the herdsman brand marks on their cattle, lest any of them seize another's for his own. Since you do likewise with these, saying "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," you not only show that God has an end, but that you yourselves too are foreign to him, having no part in his sign and sacrament, which is the mutilation of the male parts, by which he recognizes his own. Wherefore, if this is the God you worship, it is from this quite plain that he has an end. But if you wish God to be infinite, you must first renounce this one, and, your prayer changed, do penance for your past error. And this is said in such a way that we seem to have conquered you from your own resources: otherwise, if it is asked whether the highest and true God is himself infinite or not, on this point the contrariety of good and evil will be able briefly to instruct us. Since indeed, if there is no evil, God surely is infinite; but he has an end, if there is evil: but it is established that there is evil: therefore God is not infinite: for they take it that evils are from there, where there is the end of good things.

2. AUGUSTINE replied: Far be it that anyone who knows you should question you about this, or dispute about this matter at all with such men. For first you are to be cleansed, by devout faith and by whatever small reason of truth, from the figment of carnal and corporeal thoughts, that you may be able in some way and from however small a part to think spiritual things. Which, as long as you cannot (for your heresy knows nothing else than to stretch out both body and soul and God through spaces of places, whether finite or infinite, when body alone occupies such spaces, or is occupied by such spaces), you would do more advisedly if you did not mix yourselves into this question, where you can neither teach anything true, as neither in the rest; nor are you fit to learn, which perhaps you can in the rest, if you are not proud and quarrelsome. For when it begins to be asked, how God is finite, whom no place contains; how infinite, whom the Son wholly knows: how finite, the immeasurable; how infinite, the perfect: how finite, having no measure; how infinite, the measure of all: all carnal thought vanishes; and if it wishes to become what it is not yet, it first blushes for what it is. Wherefore this which you set before us about a finite and infinite God, you better end by being silent, until you cease to stray so far from the end of the Law, which is Christ. But about the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, since he himself is the true God of every creature, why he willed to insinuate himself to his people by that name, we have already said as much as was enough. About circumcision too, in the earlier parts of the work, we have often replied against ignorant slanders. But these people, if they thought with a Christian, not a heretical mind, how it was said, To the clean all things are clean, about that sign divinely given in a fitting part of the body, by which the stripping off of the flesh was figured, would in no way deride it. But because that too which follows is true—but to the unclean and the unbelieving nothing is clean; but both their mind and their conscience are polluted (Titus 1:15)—deriding them, and wittily insulting them, we gently admonish that, if according to them circumcision is base, they have no reason there to laugh, but to mourn; because their god is bound and defiled, mingled both with that particle which is cut off, and with that blood which drips.

1. FAUSTUS: If Jesus was not born, how did he die? This is now plainly a conjecture; and no one resorts to conjectures except someone whom proofs have failed. We will answer this too, however, drawing our examples from no other source than the things you are accustomed to believe: if these are true, they will confirm us as well; if false, they will destroy you as well. You say, then: How did Jesus die, if he was not a man? And I ask of you in turn: How did Elijah not die, when he was a man? Was this mortal allowed, beyond his own condition, to seize the right of immortality, while Christ, being immortal, was not allowed to take to himself something of death, if it was necessary? And if Elijah lives forever against nature, why would you not all the more grant that Jesus could die against nature for only three days—especially since you believe this not only of Elijah but of Moses and Enoch as well, that they are immortal, themselves caught up with their bodies into heaven? Therefore, if by this argument it is rightly concluded that Jesus was a man because he died, it can nonetheless be concluded by the same argument that Elijah was not a man because he did not die. But it is false that Elijah was not a man, although he is believed to be immortal; it will be equally false that Jesus was a man, although he is reckoned to have died. And if you are willing to believe me when I speak the truth, both of them have drawn a false opinion among the Hebrews—Jesus about death, and Elijah about immortality; for neither did this one die, nor did that one not die. But you believe what you wish, and what you do not wish you reduce to nature. Therefore, if it is asked what is proper to nature, nature indeed wills neither that the immortal should die nor that the mortal should not die. But if we inquire about the power in God and in a man to accomplish what they will, I think it more likely that Jesus could die than that Elijah could not die; for there is greater power in Jesus than in Elijah. And if you raise the less powerful one up into heaven against the license of nature and consecrate him to perpetuity, forgetful of his nature and condition, why should I not grant that Jesus could die if he willed—even if I agree that it was truly that death and not a figure of death? For just as from the beginning, having taken on the likeness of a man, he simulated all the affections of the human condition, so it was not beside the point if at the end too, for the sake of sealing the dispensation, he had seemed even to die.

2. Besides, this too must be recalled: that if it is asked what each thing is allowed by nature, this ought to be asked about everything that Jesus did, not about his death alone. For nature does not permit one blind from birth to see the light; yet Jesus is seen to have powerfully worked this upon the blind of this kind, so much so that the Jews themselves cried out that from the beginning of the world it had never been seen that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind (See Jn 9); that he healed a withered hand, that he gave back voice and speech to those deprived of these by nature, that he restored the vital breath to the dead and to bodies already dissolved into decay, with their frame given back to them—who would not be brought to amazement by these things, and in a way compelled, if he considers what is or is not allowed by nature, not to believe them at all? Yet all these things we Christians together believe were done by the same one, no longer by consideration of nature, but only of the power and might of God. This too is read: that having once been hurled from the brow of a mountain by the Jews, he went away unharmed. He, then, who was cast down from a high mountain and did not die, because he assuredly did not will it—why could he not also die when he willed? And let this much be answered by us in this way for now, since it pleases you to argue and you try foreign weapons, wishing to dispute dialectically; otherwise, for us neither did Jesus die nor is Elijah immortal.

3. AUGUSTINE: Whatever Holy Scripture testifies about Enoch and Elijah and Moses—Scripture set at the highest peak of authority by the sure and great proofs of its trustworthiness—this we believe, not what Faustus suspects us of believing. But what is according to nature and what is against nature, men who err as you do cannot know. That something is said, in human fashion, to be against nature when it is against the use of nature known to mortals, we too do not deny—as in what the Apostle says: if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree (Rom 11:24); he called that against nature which is against the custom of nature that human knowledge grasps, namely, that a wild olive grafted into an olive should bear, not the berries of the wild olive, but the richness of the olive. But God, the creator and founder of all natures, does nothing against nature; for that will be natural to each thing which he has made, from whom comes every measure, number, and order of nature. Nor does man himself do anything against nature, except when he sins—and he too is by punishment reduced to nature. For it belongs to the natural order of justice either that sins should not be committed or that they should not be able to go unpunished; whichever of these it is, the natural order is preserved, if not by the soul, then certainly by God. For sins vex the conscience and harm the mind itself, since by sinning it is deprived of the light of justice, even if no pains follow—pains which are either inflicted to correct, or reserved as the final lot for those who are not corrected. But we say, not inappropriately, that God does something against nature when he does something against what we know in nature. For we also call this "nature," the course of nature known and customary to us, against which, when God does something, the deeds are named mighty works or wonders. But against that highest law of nature, removed from the knowledge of the impious or of those still weak, God does nothing, just as he does nothing against himself. The spiritual and at the same time rational creature, in which class the human soul also belongs, the more fully it becomes a partaker of that unchangeable law and light, the more it sees what can and what cannot be done; but the farther removed from it, the more it marvels at the unusual, the less it discerns what is to come.

4. And through this, what was done concerning Elijah we do not know; yet this we believe of him, which truthful Scripture testifies. This indeed we know: that what was done of him is what the will of God holds; but what the will of God does not hold can in no way be done concerning anyone. Accordingly, if it is said to me that it can come about that the flesh, for instance, of this or that man should be changed into a heavenly body, I grant that it can be done, but whether it will be done I do not know; and I do not know it because what the will of God holds in this matter is hidden from me. This, however, is not hidden from me: that without doubt it will come about, if the will of God holds it so. Further, if I should hear that something was going to be, but God brought it about that it should not be, I will answer most faithfully: rather, that was going to be which God did, not that which, if it had been going to be, he would have brought about. For God surely knew what he was going to do, and therefore he at the same time knew that that was not going to be which he was going to bring about should not be; and beyond doubt what God knows is truer than what man supposes. Hence future things can no more fail to come about than past things can fail to have been done; for it is not within God's will that anything should be false by the very thing whereby it is true. Therefore all things that are truly future will without doubt come about; but if they shall not have come about, they were not future. So all things that are truly past have without doubt passed away.

5. Whoever, then, says, "If God is omnipotent, let him bring it about that the things which have been done should not have been done," does not see that he is saying this: "If he is omnipotent, let him bring it about that the things which are true should, by the very fact that they are true, be false." For he can bring it about that something not be which was; for he brings it about that it not be when he finds something to exist out of which this may come—as when someone who began to be by being born, he brings it about that he not be by dying; for he finds this done, out of which it may come. But who would say that he should bring it about that what already is not should not be? For whatever is past already is not; and if anything can come about of it, there still is something of which it may come; and if there is, how is it past? So that is not, which we truly say has been; but it is true that that has been, because in our judgment it is true, not in that thing which already is not. For the judgment by which we say that something has been is true precisely because that of which we speak already is not. This judgment God cannot make false, because he is not contrary to truth. And if you ask where this true judgment is: it is first found in our mind, when we know and say it to be true. But if it should also be taken away from our mind, when we have forgotten what we know, it will remain in truth itself. For it will always be true that that has been which was and is not; and there it will be true that that which was has already been, where it was true, before it came to be, that what was not would be future. To this truth God cannot be opposed, in whom is the highest and unchangeable truth itself, by which is illumined unto being whatever of the true is in anyone's soul and mind. But we do not call God omnipotent as if we should also believe that he can die; and because he cannot do this, therefore he is not to be called omnipotent. He alone is plainly and truly called omnipotent who truly is, and from whom alone is whatever in any way exists, whether spiritual or corporeal. For he uses every creature of his as it pleases him; and it pleases him, according to true and unchangeable justice, as he himself is to himself, to change all changeable things, while he himself is unchangeable, according to the merits of their natures or their deeds. Shall we then say that Elijah, being a creature, could not be changed either for the worse or for the better, or could not be changed in a way unusual to the human race according to the will of almighty God? Who, even the most foolish, would say this? Why, then, should we not believe what has been set down about him in most truthful Scripture?—unless we suppose that God can do only what we have been accustomed to see.

6. But if Elijah, he says, was a man and could avoid dying, why could Christ, since he was not a man, not be able to die? It is as if someone should say: If the nature of man could be changed into something better, why could the nature of God not be changed into something worse? Foolish man—because the nature of man is changeable, but God's is unchangeable. For someone equally most insane could likewise say: If he can grant to a man to reign forever, why can he not bring it about for himself that he be damned forever? I do not say this, he says, but compare at least the three-day death of God with the eternal life of man. Plainly, if you understood the three-day death of God in such a way that the flesh died in him which he assumed from the race of mortals, you would think rightly; for the gospel truth proclaims that this three-day death of Christ was wrought for the eternal life of men. But since you wish a three-day death, with no mortal creature assumed, to be believed—not absurdly, you say—to be in the divine nature itself, on the ground that human nature can be endowed with immortality, you assuredly are as senseless as one who knows neither God nor the gifts of God. Then, how is it that you do not say and hold what I set down above—that God brought it about for himself that he be damned forever, since that part of your god will be forever fixed in the lump? Or will you say this too, that a part of light is light, but a part of God is not God? Finally, that you may hear from us, without any reasoning and by the plain truth of faith, why we believe that Elijah, a man born, was caught up by God's power from the earth, but that Christ was both truly born of a virgin and truly died on the cross: we believe these things because Holy Scripture testifies both that of Elijah and this of Christ (2 Kgs 2:11; Mt 1:25; 27:50), Scripture which no one pious disbelieves, and no one but the impious fails to believe. But that about Elijah you deny, because you simulate everything; while about Christ, that he could not be born and could die, not even you say; rather, you contend that there was no birth of his from a virgin, and that his death on the cross was false—that is, also no death at all, but simulated to mock human eyes, for no other purpose than that, from those who have believed these things, pardon may be granted to you also, who lie about everything.

7. But who would put to you the objection that Faustus puts to himself as if in the person of a Catholic—"If Jesus was not born, how did he die?"—except one who gives too little thought to the fact that Adam himself both was not born and yet died? If, therefore, the Son of God had willed to form for himself true human flesh from the same source from which he formed it for that first man—since all things were made through him (See Jn 1:3)—who would dare to affirm that he could not? If, finally, he willed to take a body from the heavenly or airy or watery creation and change it into the most true quality of human flesh, in which he could both live as a mortal man and die, who would deny that he could do this, the omnipotent Son of the Omnipotent? He would not dare. Lastly, if he willed to take a body from no corporeal elements, which were created through him, but to create for himself altogether from nothing true flesh, just as all things that were not were created through him—who of us would contradict, who of us would contend that it could not be done? Not, therefore, do we believe him born of the Virgin Mary because he could not otherwise exist in true flesh and appear to men; but because so it is written in that Scripture which, unless we believe it, we can be neither Christian nor saved. We believe, then, that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, because so it is written in the Gospel; we believe that he was crucified and died, because so it is written in the Gospel; and that he was truly born and truly died, because the Gospel is truth. But why he willed to suffer all those things in flesh assumed from a woman's womb, the sum of the counsel lies with him: whether because he judged that both sexes, which he had created, were also in this way to be commended and honored, by assuming the form of a man and being born of a woman; or for some other cause, whatever it may be, I would not rashly say. Yet this I will say confidently: that it was not done otherwise than the gospel truth has taught, nor ought it to have been done otherwise than the wisdom of God judged. We set the faith of the Gospel before all the disputations of heretics; and the counsel of the wisdom of God we praise above all counsel of any creature whatever.

8. Yet Faustus urges us to believe him, saying: "And if you are willing to believe me when I speak the truth, both of them have drawn a false opinion among the Hebrews—Jesus about death, and Elijah about immortality"—although a little later he says: "For just as from the beginning, having taken on the likeness of a man, he simulated all the affections of the human condition, so it was not beside the point if at the end too, for the sake of sealing the dispensation, he had seemed even to die." Most wicked and most deceitful man, how am I to believe you, as one speaking the truth, when you say that Christ could lie about death? Was he, then, lying when he said: The Son of man must be killed, and on the third day rise (Lk 24:7); and you do not lie, and you say we should believe you as one speaking the truth? More truthful, then, was Peter, when he said to him: God forbid, Lord! This shall not happen; and thereby deserved to hear: Get behind me, Satan (Mt 16:22–23). And he indeed did not hear this without fruit, who afterward, corrected and perfected, preached that very truth of Christ's death even unto his own death. But if he, because he only thought that Christ would not die, deserved to hear "Satan," what do you deserve to hear, who not only deny that he died, but even say that he lied about death? But for this reason, he says, he is to be believed to have simulated death too, because he simulated all the affections of the human condition. For who will grant you this against the Gospel, that he simulated all the affections of the human condition? Indeed, if the evangelist said, Jesus slept (See Mt 8:24); if he said he hungered (See Mt 4:2), thirsted (See Jn 19), was grieved (Mt 26:37), was gladdened, and the like—all are true, which are so narrated that they are written down as not having been simulated by him, but plainly done or displayed, not indeed by the necessity of his condition, but by the will to teach, and also by divine power. For a man, even if he does not will it, grows angry; even if he does not will it, is grieved; even if he does not will it, sleeps; even if he does not will it, hungers and thirsts; but he did all these things because he willed. So too men are born and suffer, not because they will, nor what they will; but he did even these things because he willed. Yet these things are true and have been written down faithfully and truthfully about him, so that whoever believes his Gospel may be instructed by truth, not mocked by lies.

1. FAUSTUS: If Jesus was not born, neither did he suffer; but if he suffered, then he was also born. It is not to your advantage, believe me, to seek a consequence of nature in these matters; otherwise your whole faith will be weakened. For you too believe that Jesus was born of a virgin without intercourse with a man, and if prior things are to be proved from what follows, this will be false. For it could be answered to you in this way: that if Jesus was born of a woman, then he was also sown by a man; but if he was not sown by a man, then neither was he born of a woman. But he was able, as you believe, to be born though not sown; why, then, could he not also suffer though not brought to birth?

2. AUGUSTINE: No one puts to you what you put to yourself, except the inexperienced person whom you deceive, not the instructed person by whom you are refuted. For Jesus both could be born though not sown, and could suffer though not brought to birth; but one of these he willed, the other he did not will. For he willed to be born though not sown, but he did not will to suffer though not brought to birth, because, having been brought to birth, he suffered. You say to me: How do you know? Because I read this in the Gospel of truth. But if I should say to you: How do you know the things you say?—you set against me the authority of Mani, and say that there is falsehood in the Gospel. But I would not believe Mani when he says these things, not even if he did not praise Christ for having lied to me. This indeed he did not find in Christ, but he betrays what he himself loves.

1. FAUSTUS: But he could not die unless he had been born. And I answer: Nor could he be born unless he were not God; or if he could both be God and be born, why could he not both not be born and die? You see, then, that it is not useful enough to seek a consequence in these matters, or to lean on arguments, when one deals with things that pertain to Jesus. Rather, it must be asked what he himself proclaimed about himself, and what his Apostles proclaimed about the same. And the genealogy itself must be examined, and it must be seen whether it agrees with itself; not to seek out the truth of his birth from conjecture about his passion—because he could both suffer though not born, and being born not suffer at all; especially since you yourselves confess that nothing is impossible to God. And this too will be false, if it stands that one not born could not die.

2. AUGUSTINE: Again and often you put to yourself what you do not hear from those by whom you are confuted. No one says to you: He could not die unless he had been born—because Adam died, although he had not been born. But it is said to you: He was born, because the holy Gospel, not some heretic or other, says this; he died, because this is read in the holy Gospel, not in the book of some heretic. But you who forbid arguing when one deals with things that pertain to Jesus, and judge that it must be asked what he himself proclaimed about himself, and what his Apostles proclaimed about the same—when I begin to recite the Gospel of his apostle Matthew, where the whole narrative of his birth is woven together, you will at once say that that narrative is not Matthew's, which the whole Church says is Matthew's, brought down by a sure succession from the apostolic sees to the present bishops. What will you read to me against it? Some book of Mani, perhaps, where Jesus is denied to have been born of a virgin. Therefore, just as I believe that book to be Mani's, because from the very time when Mani lived in the flesh, through his disciples by a sure succession of your overseers it has been kept and brought down even to your times; so believe you that this book is Matthew's, which from the time when Matthew himself lived in the flesh, by an unbroken series of times, the Church has brought down by a sure succession of connection even to these times. And tell me, whose book ought we rather to believe: that of the apostle who clung to Christ while he was still on earth, or that of some Persian or other who was born so long afterward? But perhaps you will bring forward another book, which bears the name of some apostle whom it is agreed Christ chose, and there you will read that Christ was not born of Mary. Since, then, one of these books must be lying, to which do you think we ought rather to grant our trust? To the one which that Church—begun from Christ himself, carried forward through the Apostles by a sure series of successions even to these times, spread throughout the whole world—acknowledges and approves as handed down and preserved from the beginning; or to the one which the same Church rejects as unknown, especially when it is brought forward by men so truthful that they praise Christ for having lied?

3. Here you will say: Let the genealogy itself of the two books of the Gospel be considered, whether it agrees with itself. We have already said elsewhere in this work what had to be said. For nothing moves you except the question of how Joseph could have had two fathers. But if it had not occurred to you, as you thought it over, that there was one who begot and another who adopted—even so you ought not so easily to have brought forth a hasty verdict against so great an authority. But now, if even when admonished you consider how this could have come about, believe the Gospel simply, and cease rather to argue so badly and perversely.

4. But as for what Faustus thinks must be asked—what Jesus himself proclaimed about himself—to whom would it not seem just? But can this be known except by his disciples narrating it? And if they are not believed when they announce that he was born of a virgin, how will they be trusted when they announce what he proclaimed about himself? For if some writings were produced which, with no one else narrating, were said to be properly Christ's own, how could it come about that, if they were truly his, they would not be read, would not be received, would not stand out at the highest peak of authority in his Church—which is propagated and spread from him, through the Apostles, by bishops succeeding one another, even to these times; many things now fulfilled in it which were foretold before, and the things that remain unto the end without doubt to be and to come? For if those writings too were brought forth, surely it would have to be considered by whom they were brought forth. If by him, they could without doubt have been brought forth first by those who then clung to him, and through them have come even to others. And if this had been done, through those successions of overseers and peoples which I have mentioned they would shine with most well-established authority. Who, then, is so mad as to believe today that there is a letter of Christ which Mani has brought forth, and not to believe that the things Matthew wrote were done or said by Christ? Or if he doubts even of Matthew, whether he himself wrote these things, why should he not rather believe of Matthew himself what he finds in the Church, which is declared from the times of Matthew himself even to this time by a sure series of successions; and not believe some man or other coming sideways from Persia after two hundred years or more, and urging that it should rather be believed of him what Christ said and did?—since the apostle Paul himself, after the Lord's ascension, called from heaven (See Acts 9), if he had not found in the flesh Apostles, by communicating with whom and by conferring with whom it would appear that the Gospel belonged to the same fellowship, the Church would not have believed him at all. But when it had recognized him as announcing this, which they too announced, and as living in their communion and unity, with such signs coming about through him as they too worked, so, with the Lord commending him, he deserved such authority that his words are heard today in the Church as though, in him, Christ, as he himself most truly said, were heard speaking (See 2 Cor 13:3). And does Mani think that he ought to be believed by the Church of Christ, speaking against the Scriptures confirmed by so great and so ordered an authority?—Scriptures by which it is especially commended to it that whoever announces to it anything beyond what it has received should be anathema (See Gal 1:8–9).

5. "But I offer," he says, "a reason by which I may show that those Scriptures are not to be believed." Surely you are not arguing? And yet even in your very argumentation you are overcome. For all your argumentation is reduced to this: that in the end the soul should believe that it is wretched in this world because by its wretchedness it came to the aid of its God, lest he be deprived of his kingdom; and that its nature and substance are so far changeable, corruptible, violable, and defilable, that a certain part of it cannot even be cleansed, and is punished by the eternal torment of the lump by the very one who, knowing it to be innocent, drawn from his own bowels and sinning in nothing against him, mingled it with so great a defilement. This is the end of all your argumentations and fables; would that there were an end of them—but in your heart and on your lips, so that at some time you might cease to believe and speak such execrable blasphemies! "But from those very writings," he says, "I prove that they are not everywhere to be believed, since they speak things contrary to themselves." Why, then, do you not rather say that they are nowhere to be believed, as inconstant witnesses attacking themselves? "But this," he says, "I choose, which I see to be consonant with the truth." With what truth? With your fable, of course, which has at its head the war of God, in its middle the defilement of God, at its end the damnation of God. "And nowhere," he says, "are writings believed that are at variance and contrary to themselves." But it seems so to you for this reason, because you do not understand; for whatever you have brought forth that seemed such, it has been shown how you do not understand it; and whatever you shall bring forth, it will be shown. There is, then, no cause why we should not believe those Scriptures endowed with so great an authority; and plainly this is the greatest cause why we should anathematize those who announce something else.

1. FAUSTUS: Then it was magic, that he was seen and suffered, if he was not born. The same argument is turned back upon you in turn, so that this too was magic—that he was carried in the womb, or that he was brought forth, if he was not sown. It is established to be outside the law of nature for a virgin to have given birth, and much more for her to have been found a virgin even after the birth. Why, then, will you not have it that this too happened beyond nature—that he was able to suffer when he willed, without the lot of birth? Believe me; so far as the matter goes, both of us in this profess things contrary to nature; but the difference is this, that we do so honorably, you basely: we render some account of his passion, and a probable one; you render of his birth either none, or a false one. Finally, we confess that he suffered only in appearance, and did not truly die; you believe for certain that there was a childbearing, and that he was carried in a woman's womb. Or if it is not so, confess, you too, that this also was done imaginarily, so that he seemed to be born, and all our contention will be overthrown. For that, indeed, which you are accustomed often to affirm—that he was necessarily born, because otherwise he could not be seen or speak to men—is ridiculous; since many times, as has already been proved by our people, angels are shown both to have been seen by men and to have spoken.

2. AUGUSTINE: It is not said to you that it is magic for one who was not born to die; for we have already noted above that this was done in Adam. But even if it had never been done, and the Lord Christ had willed to come in such a way that, not assuming flesh from a virgin, but nevertheless appearing in true flesh, he should redeem us by a true death, who would dare to say that he could not? But that was better which he did, that he should also be born of a virgin, and should deign also to commend, by being born, both sexes, for the freeing of which he was going to die, his masculine body procreated from a woman—speaking against you yourselves most of all by the very deed, and subverting you, who proclaim that male and female are the work, not of God, but of the devil. But this is what you are said to assert, which is like magic: that you say his passion and death were done only in appearance, and were deceitfully shadowed forth, so that he might seem to die who was not dying. From which it comes about that you say his resurrection too was shadowy, imaginary, and deceitful; for there cannot be a true resurrection of one who has not truly died. So it comes about that he showed false scars to his doubting disciples; and that Thomas, not confirmed by truth, but deceived by deception, cried out: My Lord and my God (See Jn 20:28); and yet you try to persuade us that you speak the truth with your tongue, when you say that Christ lied with his whole body. These are the things charged against you, who have fashioned for yourselves such a Christ, whose true disciples you cannot be unless you too have been liars. But the flesh of man born of a virgin cannot for this reason be thought magic, because the flesh of Christ alone was so born—just as neither is it magic that the flesh of Christ alone rose on the third day, never thereafter to die. Otherwise all the miracles of God will be magical, because they were done singularly; but they were truly done, and showed what was true; they did not delude the eyes of men with deceitful tricks. These indeed are often called against nature, not because they are opposed to nature, but because they exceed the measure of nature which is customary to us. May the Lord, then, repel from the minds of his little ones what Faustus, as if admonishing, has tried to persuade—that we too should profess an imaginary, not a true, birth of Christ, and that so all contention between us might be ended; nay rather, let there remain for us against them a struggle for truth, rather than with them a concord in falsehood.

3. Nevertheless, I ask of them: if our contention is ended when we have said this, why do they not say it themselves? Why do they affirm that Christ's death itself was not true, but imaginary, while they have chosen to say that his birth was not even such, but altogether nothing? If they blushed at the weight of evangelical authority, and therefore did not dare to say that Christ did not suffer even imaginarily, the same evangelical authority testifies also to his birth. For even if two evangelists narrated the very childbearing of Mary (See Mt 1:25; Lk 2:7), yet none of the evangelists was silent that Jesus had a mother (See Mt 2:11; Mk 3:32; Lk 2:33; Jn 2:1). Or did it irk them to preach this too as simulated, because Matthew traces out one set of generations, Luke another, so that they seem not to agree with each other? But take a man who does not understand, and he will think that even in many things which pertain to Christ's passion the evangelists do not agree with each other; but take one who does understand, and everywhere they agree. Or is it that to simulate death is honorable, but to simulate birth too is base? Why, then, does he exhort us to confess this, by which our contention might be ended? Hence, why it seems to me that he wished to preach Christ's birth, not even simulated as his death, but altogether nothing, will appear in the following discourse, where we shall answer another question.

4. But far be it that there should be any baseness in the holy members of the saints, even the genital ones. They are indeed called unseemly, because they do not have that form of beauty which the members placed in open view have. But see what the Apostle says, when from the very unity and frame of the members of our body he urges love upon the Church. Much rather, he says, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those parts of the body which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; and our unseemly parts have more abundant comeliness, whereas our comely parts have no need; but God has tempered the body, giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked it, that there might be no divisions in the body (1 Cor 12:22–25). Base, therefore, is the unlawful use of those members, not subject to the laws of temperance—not the members themselves, which not only do celibates and virgins keep in excellent integrity, but the holy fathers and mothers themselves who were married so used them, taking thought only for procreation, that that natural movement was in no way base which served, not lust, but reason. How much more, then, in the holy Virgin Mary, who conceived the flesh of Christ by faith, did the members have nothing of baseness, which served not a human and lawful conception, but only a divine birth? Rightly indeed so honored, that she might pour over into us bodily, with her integrity preserved, that Christ whom we might conceive by believing with whole hearts, and in a manner bring forth by confessing. For in no way did Christ by being born make his mother worse, so as to take away from her the glory of virginity from one to whom he had brought the gift of fruitfulness. These things were done truly, not deceitfully; but they are new, but they are unusual, but they are against the most well-known course of nature, because they are great, because they are wondrous, because they are divine—and therefore all the more true, certain, and well-established.

"And angels," he says, "were seen and spoke, although they were not born." As if we say that Christ, unless he were born of a woman, could neither be seen nor speak. He could, but he did not will it; and that is better which he willed. And that he willed this is certain for this reason, because he did it—he who would do nothing by necessity, as your god does, but everything by will. And that he did this we do not doubt, for this reason, because we believe, not some heretic, but his Gospel.

1. FAUSTUS: Of you Paul long ago wrote: that some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful (1 Tim 4:1–3). I will never agree that these things were said by the Apostle of you, unless you first confess that Moses and the Prophets brought forward doctrines of demons, and were interpreters of a deceiving and malign spirit, who carefully teach that one must abstain from pork and the other flesh which they call unclean. About these things, then, you must first deliberate, and think long and much: how these things ought to be taken—whether they seem to have spoken these things in God or in a demon. For thus far either Moses and the Prophets will be condemned along with us, or we will be absolved along with them. For this present verdict of yours is not just: that we, who hold that only the priestly class of men among the people ought to abstain from flesh, should seem to you to be followers of the doctrine of demons; but that your Prophets, and Moses himself indeed, who first forbade not only to the chief priests but to the whole human race indiscriminately swine's flesh, and hare, and hedgehog flesh, and cuttlefish and squid, and the other kinds of fish lacking scales (See Lev 11), you reckon to have spoken these things not in a deceiving spirit, nor in the doctrine of demons, but rather in God and in the Holy Spirit. Therefore, though for the moment I grant you that Paul said this, I will not have been overcome by you until you condemn Moses and the Prophets—so that what perhaps you would never have done, convinced by reason and truth, you now seem to do for the belly's sake: to blaspheme Moses.

2. There is also another thing among you about the three boys in Daniel, by which you will likewise be vehemently confounded, if it stands that to abstain from foods is a religion of demons. For they are read to have abstained not only from things forbidden by the Law, but even from things allowed (See Dan 1:12)—whom you are accustomed greatly to admire and to number among the martyrs; whereas they too followed a doctrine of demons, if it is established that this is the testimony of the Apostle. To this add that Daniel himself reports that he fasted for three weeks of days, and did not eat flesh, nor drink wine, while he prayed for his people (See Dan 10:2–3). Why, then, does he too here magnify himself in a doctrine of demons, and seize glory from the contrivance of a deceiving spirit?

3. But of you what shall I say?—that is, of the more Christian among you, of whom some indeed abstain from pork, but very many from every quadruped, and others from absolutely every animal; and on this account the whole Church holds them in its eyes, and receiving them with the highest veneration, only does not reckon them gods. And you do not see, you unteachable ones, that if this testimony is true and was spoken by the Apostle, they too have been mocked by the doctrines of demons. But what, again, shall we say of that which one might surely dare to thwart or deny, since it is established among all and equally throughout the whole world celebrated every year with all zeal in the Catholic assembly? I mean Lent—which whoever among you thinks must be duly observed, must of necessity abstain from all those things which this chapter says were created by God for us to receive, and besides calls the abstinence from the aforesaid a doctrine of demons. What then of you also, dearest ones? Do you then live by the rite of demons, when these mysteries of Christ's passion are celebrated by you, and are you caught by the deceit of a deceiving spirit, and do you speak lies in hypocrisy, and have your conscience seared? But if none of these things apply to you—then neither to us. What, then, does this chapter mean, or by whom shall we suppose it was written, and against whom—since it confirms neither the traditions of the Old Testament nor the decrees of the New? Seeing that it teaches that this is to be abstained from by all, as appears from you yourselves, and that, indeed, by some though not by all; but this verdict of yours wishes all abstinence whatever from fleshly foods to be doctrines of demons. And if you too believe this, I will say the same thing again and again: condemn Moses, renounce the Prophets, bear an equal verdict about yourselves also—because, as they always abstain from certain foods, so you at times abstain from all.

4. But if Moses and the Prophets, when they judge between foods, seem to you to sanction the law of God, and not of demons; if Daniel observed three weeks in the Holy Spirit; if Ananias, Azariah, and Mishael, those boys, by the prompting of a divine mind, preferred to use vegetables and pulse; if, finally, among you as many as abstain do so not driven by demons; if Lent without wine and flesh is kept by you not superstitiously, but by divine law: see, I pray, see, that it would be the height of madness to suppose that Paul said that abstinence from all foods is a doctrine of demons, and to forbid marriage—just as neither is that which he says, that virgins too should be dedicated to Christ, a doctrine of demons; which you, reading likewise without consideration, as the rest, presently turn back upon us; and you do not see that hence both your virgins are marked as captured by a doctrine of demons, and you are shown to be the chief priests of demons, who ever vie to incite them to this profession by your persuasions, so that already in almost all the churches there is held among you a greater number of virgins than of married women. Why, then, do you too not at last desist from such undertakings? Why do you lead the wretched daughters of men into deceit, if in them not the will of Christ is fulfilled, but of demons? And yet I should like you first to answer us this: whether to make virgins at all is a doctrine of demons, or only to make them by forbidding marriage. If by forbidding, it is nothing to us; for we too judge it as foolish to hinder one who is willing, as wicked and impious enough to force one who is unwilling. But if to favor this purpose too, and not to resist one who is willing, you think this also a doctrine of demons—I say nothing now of your peril; I myself now fear for the Apostle, lest he seem to have brought a doctrine of demons into Iconium then, when he kindled Thecla, already pledged to the marriage chamber, into love by his discourse of perpetual virginity. But what shall we say even of the Master himself, and the author of all sanctity, Jesus, and the celibate bridegroom of the girls of this very profession, who in the Gospel, marking out three kinds of eunuchs—one by nature, another made, the third voluntary—nevertheless assigned the palm to these: those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven (Mt 19:12), signifying virgins and boys who, with the very desire of marrying cut out from their hearts, dwell in his Church ever in the stead of eunuchs, as it were in a royal house? What then—does this too seem to you a doctrine of demons, and spoken in a deceiving spirit? And who else will there be speaking in God, if Paul and Christ are proved to have been priests of demons? For I pass over the rest of the Apostles of the same our Lord—Peter and Andrew, Thomas, and that one inexperienced in Venus among the rest, the blessed John, who in various ways sang of the profession of this good thing among virgins and boys with divine proclamation, leaving to us, and indeed to you yourselves, the pattern for making virgins. But these, as I said, I pass over, because you have excluded them from the canon, and you can easily, with your sacrilegious mind, impute to them doctrines of demons. Will you then be able to say the same of Christ too, or of the apostle Paul, who likewise everywhere, it is established, both always preferred in word the unmarried to the married, and showed this also by deed toward the most holy Thecla? But if this was not a doctrine of demons, which both Paul announced to Thecla, and the other Apostles to others, who can now believe that this was recorded by him as though the desire and doctrine of demons—even the persuasion to sanctity? There is, then, no reason for the moment why you should suppose that we make virgins by exhortations alone, and not by forbidding marriage. For this very thing is implanted in us too; and assuredly that man is to be thought, not only foolish, but mad, who supposes that what is publicly permitted can be forbidden by a private law—I mean this very thing, to marry. Therefore we too exhort the willing that they should persevere, yet we do not force the unwilling to come forward. For we know how much the will, how much even the very force of nature, avails against a public law, let alone against a private one, to which it is free to answer: I will not. If, then, to make virgins in this way is without crime, we too are beyond fault; but if in any way whatever to make virgins is a crime, you too are guilty. Now with what mind or purpose you bring forward this chapter against us, I do not see.

5. AUGUSTINE: Hear, then, what you confess you do not see—with what mind or purpose we bring forward this chapter against you. Not because you abstain from flesh, for some even of our first fathers did this, as you mention—yet not for the sake of condemning it, but of signifying something which you do not understand, and of which I have already spoken as much as seemed sufficient in the earlier parts of this work. And Christians—not heretics, but Catholics—for the sake of subduing the body, that the soul may be more humbled in prayer, not because they believe it to be unclean, abstain not only from flesh but even from certain fruits of the earth; either always, as a few do, or on certain days and seasons, as nearly all do through Lent—each one the more or the less as he wills or is able. But you deny that the creation itself is good, and you call it unclean, because the devil, you say, works flesh from the more dreggy matter of evil; and on this account you cast it away in horror, as the more unclean and more savage bonds of your god. Yet to your Hearers, whom you said were distinct from the class of priests, you grant that these things may be eaten by way of indulgence—just as the Apostle grants to some by way of indulgence, not all conjugal intercourse, even that which is done for the sake of begetting alone, but that which is done through incontinence, yet still with a spouse (See 1 Cor 7:5–6). For nothing is granted by way of indulgence except sin. This is what you hold about all food of flesh; this you yourselves learned from your heresy, and teach your Hearers; but to them you grant that it is to be pardoned, on account of which they minister necessities to you, as I said—not saying that it is not a sin, but bestowing pardon on those who sin; while you yourselves abstain from every such thing as from an evil and unclean contagion. And through this, that which follows those words of the Apostle, with which you ended your citation of this chapter, is precisely what makes us bring this testimony against you—which you too, I think, knew, so that you did not set down those words first, and said to us at the end: "With what mind or purpose you bring forward this chapter against us, I do not see"; whereas you preferred to be silent about this very purpose of ours rather than to mention it. For when the Apostle had said: abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, he went on to say: and by those who have known the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be cast away which is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Tim 4:3–5). These are the things you deny; with this mind, this will, this opinion you keep from foods of this kind, namely that they are evil and unclean by nature, not by signification. In which matter you without doubt blaspheme their creator; this is what pertains to a doctrine of demons. Do not, then, wonder that this was prophesied of you by the Holy Spirit so long before.

6. Again, if you exhorted to virginity as the apostolic teaching exhorts—he who gives in marriage does well, and he who does not give in marriage does better (1 Cor 7:38)—so that you would say that marriage is good, but virginity better, as the Church does, which is truly the Church of Christ, the Holy Spirit would not foretell you thus, saying: forbidding to marry (1 Tim 4:3). For he forbids who says this is evil, not he who sets another better thing before this good. Finally, you detest above all that intercourse which alone is honorable and conjugal, and which even the marriage tablets set forth, for the sake of begetting children; whence in truth you forbid, not so much intercourse, as marriage. For there is intercourse even for the sake of lust, but there is marriage only for the sake of children. And do not say that you do not forbid it, because you tolerate, without breach of friendship, many of your Hearers unwilling or unable to obey in this. For you have the one thing in the doctrine of your error, the other in the necessity of fellowship. Hence it is that I deferred a little while ago to say why Christ's death seemed to you to be preached as deceitful and simulated, but not also his birth. For you preach and praise death as the separation of the soul—that is, of the nature of your god—from the body of his enemies, that is, from the figment of the devil; and on this account you believed it a worthy thing which Christ might commend, even if not by dying, yet by simulating death. But in birth, because you believe that your god is not loosed but rather bound, you were unwilling to believe Christ even deceitfully to have imagined this—so that Mary would not so displease you if she had had intercourse and not conceived, as she displeases you because she did not have intercourse and yet gave birth. You see, then, how great a difference there is between those who exhort to virginity, setting a greater good before a lesser good, and those who forbid marriage, more vehemently accusing the intercourse of propagation, which alone is properly nuptial; how great a difference between those who abstain from foods for the sake of signifying a sacrament, or for the sake of chastising the body, and those who abstain from foods which God created by saying that God did not create them. Accordingly, the former is the teaching of the Prophets and Apostles, the latter of lying demons.

1. FAUSTUS: To the pure all things are pure, but to the impure and defiled nothing is pure; rather, both their mind and their conscience are defiled (Titus 1:15). This too must be considered—whether it is to your advantage to believe it was said by Paul; for thus far it has stood that Moses and the Prophets were not only driven by demons, when they brought forward such great laws about the differences of foods, but also that they themselves were impure and defiled in mind and conscience, so that what follows might fittingly fall upon them too: they profess that they know God, but by their works they deny him (Titus 1:16). And to whom does this better apply than to the Prophets and to Moses, who are proved to have lived far otherwise than befitted those who knew God? Yet until now I had supposed that, apart from adulteries and frauds and murders, there was nothing else by which Moses and the Prophets might seem to have had polluted consciences; but now, with this chapter showing it, it is given to know that they were of a defiled mind on this account too, because they supposed something to be defiled. To what purpose, then, do you suppose that even such men could attain the vision of the divine majesty, when it is written that none but those who are pure in heart can see God (See Mt 5:8)? But even if these had been chaste from unlawful deeds, this superstition alone of abstaining from certain foods, if it defiles the mind, could have denied them the sight of the divinity. Now therefore has that boasting of Daniel too and of the three boys vanished and been at once extinguished—who themselves, up to this preaching which holds nothing to be unclean, were reckoned in Judaism most chaste and of good mind, because, mindful of their fathers' traditions, they kept themselves unstained with all zeal from the banquets of the Gentiles, and especially from things offered to idols (See Dan 1:12). For now at last it has appeared that they too were defiled in mind and conscience, then most of all, when they kept their mouth from blood and deadly foods.

2. But perhaps ignorance excuses them; for this Christian faith not yet having appeared, which would teach that all things are pure to the pure, they themselves supposed certain things to be not pure. But you—what excuse do you now use, if, when Paul cries out that nothing is not pure, and calls abstinence from foods a doctrine of demons (See 1 Tim 4:1, 3), and calls those defiled in mind who suppose anything to be defiled, you not only abstain, as we said, but even seize glory from it, and believe yourselves the more acceptable to Christ the more you will be abstinent from foods—that is, according to this verdict, the more defiled in mind and the more polluted in conscience? What of the fact that, since there are three religions in the world which place the purgation of the mind equally in chastities and abstinence, though by a most diverse rite—I mean the Jews, the Christians, and the Gentiles—it cannot be discovered from which of these religions this saying comes, which teaches that nothing is unholy? Surely not from Judaism; likewise not from Paganism, because it too distinguishes foods; nor is there any difference, except that the Hebrew differs from the Pagans in certain animals. There remains the Christian faith; and if you think it proper to this to reckon nothing polluted, the first thing is that you confess that there is no Christian among you. For all among you—to be silent about the rest—nonetheless reckon carrion and things offered to idols to be no small defilement (See Acts 15:29). Or if this too is done by you by the right of Christianity, then it is not even the verdict of this religion, which takes away utterly all abstinence from unclean things. To what purpose, then, could this have been said by Paul, which suits no religion? For the Apostle did not so much put off religion as change the rite, when from a Jew he became a Christian. But he who wrote this chapter seems to me to have rested on no religion at all.

3. Therefore, if henceforth, seeking from the Scriptures something to the injury of our faith, you find anything, remember to bring it against us only then, when you have seen clearly that it is not contrary to you—as also that which you are accustomed to bring forward about Peter, namely that the same once saw a vessel let down from heaven, in which were all kinds of animals and serpents; and when he was astonished and wondering, a voice was heard saying to him: Peter, whatever you see in the vessel, kill and eat. And he, answering the same: Lord, he said, I will not touch what is common and unclean. And again the voice to him: What I have sanctified, call not unclean (Acts 10:11–15). Now although this very thing seems through allegory to signify something else, and not an indifference of foods, yet because it pleases you to understand this too in that way, you must therefore of necessity feed indiscriminately on all beasts, and on vipers and snakes, and on every other serpentine kind, according to Peter's vision. For thus far you will prove yourselves truly to be obeying the voice which it is reported he heard; and yet you must always remember this too, that hereby Moses and the Prophets were condemned, who supposed many things to be polluted of those which God had sanctified, according to the verdict of this voice.

4. AUGUSTINE: When the Apostle says, To the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15), he willed that the natures themselves be understood, which God created, according to what Moses wrote in Genesis: And God made all things; and behold, they were very good (Gen 1:31); not the significations, according to which God, through the same Moses, distinguished the clean from the unclean (See Lev 11). Since on this we have already said many things and in many places, it will now suffice to have briefly noted it. Accordingly, those who, already in the time of the revelation of the New Testament, would still think that those shadows of things to come were so to be kept that without them the Gentiles could not receive the salvation which is in Christ, the Apostle calls impure, because they were carnal in their wisdom; and unbelievers, because they did not distinguish the time of grace from the time of the Law. To them he says nothing is clean, because both in the things they refused and in the things they took, they did not use them holily or justly—just as all unbelievers indeed, but you Manicheans especially, to whom nothing whatever is clean. For not even the food itself which you take, although you separate it with great care as if from the contagion of flesh, is clean to you, who say it was created by none but the devil. In it too you claim to purge, by eating, your god bound and polluted. At least you might seem clean to yourselves, by whose bellies he deserves to be purged. But you contend that your bodies too are the nature and workmanship of the race of darkness, and that your souls are defiled by those very bodies. What, then, is clean to you? Not the things you take, not that into which you pass the things you take, not you yourselves who purge what is taken. You see, then, on whose account the Apostle then said that verdict; yet he said such a verdict as would hold all unbelievers and impure persons, but would especially and most of all convict you. All things, then, are pure to the pure, according to the nature in which they were created; yet not all things were pure according to signification to the first people of the Jews; nor are all things suited to us, whether for the health of the body or for the custom of human society; but when each thing is rendered its own and keeps the natural order, all things are pure to the pure; but to the impure and unbelievers, such as you especially are, nothing is pure. The remaining words of the Apostle which follow, you yourselves would say to yourselves wholesomely, if you wished your seared conscience to be healed. For it follows: but their mind and conscience are defiled.

1. FAUSTUS: If you accept the Gospel, you must believe all things which are written in it. For do you, because you accept the Old Testament, therefore believe everything indiscriminately which is written in it? Surely you excerpt from it only those prophecies which signified that a king would come to the Jews, because you suppose this to be Jesus; and a few common precepts of civil discipline, such as: You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery (Exod 20:13–14); the rest you pass over, and reckon them to be no less, and the very same, as what Paul reckoned dung (See Phil 3:8). What, then, is foreign in this, or what is a wonder, if I too, reading from the New Testament whatever is purest and suited to my salvation, pass over the things which, deceitfully introduced by your forebears, discolor both his majesty and his grace?

2. Or if the Testament of the Father has some things in which it ought to be little heeded (for you wish the Jewish law to be the Father's, of which we know how many things make for you horror, how many for shame, so that, as far as the mind goes, you yourselves have long since judged it to be not genuine, although partly the Father himself, as you believe, wrote it for you with his own finger, partly Moses wrote it, faithful and upright), do you think that the Testament of the Son alone could not be corrupted, alone has nothing in it which ought to be disapproved?—especially since it is established to have been written neither by him nor by his Apostles, but long afterward, by certain men of uncertain name, who, lest they should not be believed when writing things they did not know, set upon the fronts of their writings partly the names of Apostles, partly the names of those who were seen to have followed the Apostles, asserting that they wrote according to these the things they wrote. Whereby it seems to me all the more that they did grave injury to the disciples of Christ, because the dissonant and self-contradictory things they wrote, they referred to them, and professed that they wrote these Gospels according to them—Gospels so stuffed with errors, with such contradictions of narratives and at the same time of opinions, that they agree neither with themselves at all, nor among themselves. What, then, is this other than to slander good men, and to call the concordant company of Christ's disciples into the charge of discord? Since we, reading these things, observe this with a most sound gaze of the heart, we have judged it most equitable, having taken the useful things from them—that is, those which both build up our faith and propagate the glory of Christ the Lord and of his almighty Father God—to reject the rest, which befit neither their majesty nor our faith.

3. Accordingly, neither do you, as I had begun to say, believe that circumcision is to be received carnally from the Old Testament, although it is so written (See Gen 17:9–14); nor that the Sabbath is to be kept in rest and leisure, although it is so read (See Exod 31:13); nor that God is to be appeased by sacrifices, as it seems to Moses, and by immolations (See Lev 1); but these things indeed, as wholly foreign and set far from the Christian rite, and in no part probable, you have despised. But certain of them you have even divided in two, and partly embrace, partly refuse: as the Passover, which is itself also an annual sacred rite of the Old Testament, in whose celebration, though it is written for you not only to kill a lamb to be eaten at night, but also to abstain from leaven for seven days, and to be content with unleavened bread along with bitter herbs (See Exod 12)—you indeed take up the Passover, but pass over that rite and custom by which it was provided that the same ought to be kept. Likewise the weeks of seven days, that is, Pentecost, which Moses likewise judged ought to be steeped in a certain kind and number of sacrifices (See Lev 23), you equally observe; but with the condemned part of it, that is, with the very oblations and sacrifices themselves, because these do not agree with the Christian faith. But of the commandment to abstain from common foods, it seemed to you, and was vehemently believed, that carrion indeed and things offered to idols are surely unclean (See Acts 15:29); but you were unwilling to believe the same of pork, nor of hare or hedgehog, nor of mullets and squid, and the other kinds of fish which were to your taste—although Moses testifies that all these same are unclean (See Lev 11).

4. But those things I believe you are unwilling even to hear from the Old Testament, much less to admit—that is, fathers-in-law sleeping with daughters-in-law, like Judah; fathers with daughters, like Lot; Prophets with harlots, like Hosea; husbands selling the nights of their own wives to lovers, like Abraham; one husband mingled with two sisters by blood, like Jacob; rulers of the people, and those you would believe most filled with God, wallowing with thousands and hundreds of whores, like David and Solomon; or again that which is provided by the marriage law in Deuteronomy, that the wife of a deceased brother, if he should die without children, ought to marry the surviving brother, and that he should raise up offspring from her in the place of his brother; and that if a man should be unwilling to do this, the woman ought to lay before the elders a complaint about this impiety of her kinsman, so that they, having summoned him, may coerce him with censorial severity; and if he persistently refuses, and does not go unpunished before them, he should be stripped of the shoe of his right foot, struck in the face by the aforesaid woman, and depart spat upon and cursed, to have this reproach forever in his offspring (See Deut 25:5–10). These, then, and others of this kind, are both the examples and the laws of the Old Testament; which, if they are good, why do you not imitate them? If evil, why do you not condemn their author, that is, the Old Testament itself? Or if you too think these things were inserted into it as false, as we believe about the New, then we are equal. Cease, then, henceforth to demand of us in the New Testament what you do not keep in the Old.

5. For my part, so far as I judge, insofar as you have willed it now to be persuaded that the Old Testament too is from God, it is more convenient enough and more excusable for you, who do not keep its commandments, if you confess it to be vitiated by unfitting additions, than if you spurn the same as inviolate and uncorrupted. Accordingly, I have always held this verdict about you, and hold it, as often as it is asked why you transgress the commands of the Old Testament: that you either despise it as wise men, as false, or neglect it as defiant and irreverent men, as true. Meanwhile, because you compel me to believe all things which are inserted in the monuments of the New Testament, if I should accept it, know that you too, as far as the mind goes, do not believe many things which are in the Old Testament, although you profess to accept it. For neither do you hold among the things confessed and credible from it that everyone is cursed who has hung on a tree (See Deut 21:23), because this surely applies also to Jesus; or that he too is held among the cursed who has not raised up seed in Israel, because this comprises also all virgins and the boys of God; or that he will utterly perish from his people who has not been circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin (See Gen 17:14), because this too applies to every Christian; or that he is to be killed with stones who has broken the Sabbath (See Num 15:35); or that he is not to be spared who has broken any single commandment whatever of the Old Testament. If you believed all these, and held it firm that these same were commanded by God, believe me, you would have laid hands on Christ first; nor would you now be angry at the Jews, who, having persecuted him with their minds and strength, fulfilled the commandments of their God.

6. For my part, I am not unaware that you do not dare to say these things are false, but that they were commanded to the Jews for the time then, namely until the coming of Jesus; who, since he has come, foretold, as you wish, by the same Old Testament, may himself now teach what is to be accepted by us from it, and what to be left. But whether the prophets foretold Jesus, we shall see afterward; meanwhile it behooves me now to answer this: that if Jesus, announced through the Old Testament, now judges and sifts, and teaches that a few things of it are to be accepted, but very many to be rejected; and the Paraclete promised to us from the New Testament likewise teaches what we ought to accept from it, and what to reject—of whom Jesus himself, when he promised him, says in the Gospel: He will lead you into all truth, and he will announce to you all things, and bring them to your remembrance (Jn 16:13). Therefore let it be permitted to us as much in the New Testament through the Paraclete as you show is permitted to you in the Old through Jesus—unless perhaps the Testament of the Son seems to you to be worth more than that of the Father, if indeed it is the Father's, so that, when so many things are rejected from that one, of this one alone nothing ought not to be approved; especially since it is established to have been written neither by Christ, as we said, nor by his Apostles.

7. Therefore, just as you admit from the Old Testament only the prophecies, and those precepts we mentioned above, civil and pertaining to the discipline of common life, but have set aside circumcision, and sacrifices, and the Sabbath and its observance, and unleavened bread—what is amiss if we too, accepting from the New Testament only those things which we find said, in honor and praise of the Son of majesty, either by him or by his Apostles, but now perfect and faithful ones, disregard the rest, which were either spoken then simply and ignorantly by the untrained, or thrown in obliquely and malignly by enemies, or imprudently affirmed by writers and handed down to posterity? I mean this very thing: born of a woman shamefully, circumcised in Jewish fashion, having sacrificed in Gentile fashion, baptized humbly, led about by the devil through the deserts, and tempted by him most miserably. These things, then, being excepted, and whatever was thrown in upon him by the writers from the Old Testament under false attestation, we believe the rest—especially the mystical fixing of his cross, by which the wounds of our soul's passion are shown; then his salutary precepts, then his parables, and the whole deifying discourse, which, setting forth most of all the distinction of two natures, does not come into doubt that it is his. There is, then, no reason now why you should suppose that I ought to believe all things which the Gospels contain, since you, as was shown above, scarcely touch with the tips, as they say, of your lips the topmost liquid of the Old Testament.

8. AUGUSTINE: We praise all the Scriptures of the Old Testament as true and divine, as is worthy; you assail the Scriptures of the New Testament as falsified and corrupted. We do not merely say, but in the apostolic writings also show and teach, that the things which we now do not observe from the Books of the Old Testament were nevertheless fittingly commanded at that time and to that people, and that in those very things which we do not observe, things were signified to us which we may understand and hold spiritually; but you reprehend altogether everything which you do not accept in the books of the New Testament, and assert that it was said or written neither by Christ nor by his Apostles. You see, then, how great a distance there is between us and you, as far as this matter goes. Since, then, it is asked of you why you do not accept everything in the books of the New Testament, but even in those books in which you approve some things, you refuse, reprehend, and accuse many things, contending that they were inserted by corrupters, do not take as your example the distinction of our faith or observance, but render an account of your own presumption.

9. For if it is asked of us why we do not worship God by the rite by which the Hebrew fathers worshiped in the time of the Old Testament, we answer that God commanded us something else through the fathers of the New Testament; and this not against the Old Testament, since in it too this was foretold beforehand. For this very thing was foretold through the prophet: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will accomplish over the house of Israel and over the house of Judah a New Covenant; not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day when I took their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt (Jer 31:31–32). Behold, this too was prophesied, that that Covenant would not endure, but that a New one would be. Here, if it should be objected that we do not belong to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, we defend ourselves from the apostolic teaching, because the Apostle teaches that Christ is the seed of Abraham, and says to us who belong to his body: Therefore you are the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:29). Further, if it should be asked of us why we hold the authority of that Covenant whose rite we do not observe, to this too we answer from the apostolic writings; for the Apostle says: Let no one, therefore, judge you in food and drink, or in respect of a feast day, or a new moon, or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come (Col 2:16–17). For thus he shows both why these ought to be read and accepted—that is, lest we extinguish prophecy, because they were made in a shadow of things to come—and that we ought not to mind those who would judge us in this matter, because we no longer observe them bodily; just as elsewhere he said something of the kind: These things happened to them in a figure; but they were written for our correction, upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11). When, therefore, something is read in the document of the Old Testament such as is not commanded to be observed by us in the New Testament, or even is prohibited, what it signifies must be sought, not reprehended; because by the very fact that it is no longer observed, it is proved not condemned, but fulfilled—of which we have said many things, and often.

10. As, for instance, this very thing which Faustus, not understanding, charged as a crime against the commandments of the Old Testament: that a brother was commanded to marry his brother's wife to this end, that he might raise up offspring not for himself but for him, and call by his name what was born thence (See Deut 25:5–10)—what else does it foreshow in a figure, except that every preacher of the Gospel ought so to labor in the Church that he may raise up seed to his deceased brother, that is, to Christ, who died for us; and that what is raised up should receive his name? Finally, the Apostle, fulfilling this, no longer carnally in the foreshadowing signification, but spiritually in the completed truth, mentions those whom he has begotten in Christ Jesus through the Gospel (See 1 Cor 4:15), is angry at them, and rebuking corrects them when they wish to belong to Paul: Was Paul, he says, crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Cor 1:13) As if he said: I begot you for my deceased brother; you are called Christians, not Paulinians. But he who, chosen by the Church, refuses the ministry of evangelizing, is by the Church itself deservedly and worthily despised. For this is what he is commanded to do, to spit in his face—not indeed without a sign of this reproach, that he be stripped of the shoe of one foot, lest he be in the lot of those to whom the Apostle himself says: and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace (Eph 6:15); and of whom the prophet mentions: How beautiful are the feet of those who announce peace, who announce good things! (Isa 52:7) For he who so holds the evangelical faith that it both profits himself and does not refuse to profit the Church, is rightly understood to be shod on both feet. But he who supposes that, because he has believed, enough provision has been made for himself, but flees the care of gaining others, will not signify that figured reproach of the man with one bare foot, but will bear it fulfilled in himself.

11. What of the fact that he charges that the Passover too is celebrated by us, and yet does not taunt us that we celebrate it as the Jews do, since we rather have the lamb in the reality of the present Gospel, not in the shadow of one to come, and signify its slaying, both daily and especially in the annual solemnity, not as one to come, but commemorate it as done? For this reason indeed the day of the solemnity of our Passover does not coincide with the day of the shadowy celebration of the Jews, that we might also embrace the Lord's day, on which Christ rose. But the unleavened bread, those who are Christians of right faith keep, not in the leaven of the old life, that is, of malice, but in the truth and sincerity of faith itself (See 1 Cor 5:8); not for seven days, but every day; which was signified by the sevenfold number of days, by which every day is daily revolved. And although this is somewhat laborious in this world, since narrow and strait is the way that leads to life (See Mt 7:13), yet a sure reward is kept; for the labor itself was signified by those bitter herbs, in that they are somewhat bitter.

12. Pentecost too, that is, the fiftieth day from the passion and resurrection of the Lord, we celebrate, on which he sent us the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, whom he had promised (See Acts 2:1–4); which thing to come was also signified through the Passover of the Jews, when, on the fiftieth day after the celebration of the slain lamb, Moses received on the mountain the law written by the finger of God (See Exod 19–31). Read the Gospel, and notice that there the Holy Spirit is called the finger of God (See Lk 11:20). For those things are celebrated annually in the Church which were done notably and excellently on certain days, so that the festival celebrated together may keep their necessary and salutary memory. If, then, you wish to know why we celebrate the Passover: because then Christ was sacrificed for us. If you wish to know why we do not celebrate it by the Jewish rite: because that was a prefiguration of the true thing to come, this a commemoration of the completed thing; and a thing future and a thing past are not even by our own words enunciated in the same way; of which we have already said enough in this work.

13. But if you also ask this, why, of all the foods from which that people was prohibited in the shadow of things to come, we do not feed on carrion and on what is offered to idols—hear this too, and at some time set the truth before the slanders of vanity. For why it is not expedient for a Christian to feed on what is offered to idols, the Apostle says: I do not wish you, he says, to become partners of demons. For he does not reprehend the immolation itself which the fathers made, prefiguring the blood of the sacrifice by which Christ redeemed us; rather, what the Gentiles immolate, he says, they immolate to demons, and not to God. Then he added what I said: I do not wish you to become partners of demons (1 Cor 10:20). For if the very nature of the flesh offered to idols were unclean, it would surely defile even one who did not know. For it would be no less itself for being received by one who did not know; but on account of conscience, lest he seem to have had communion with demons. By "carrion" I think is meant that which the use of men did not admit for food, because it is the diseased flesh, not of slain, but of dead animals, nor suited to the health of the body, for the sake of which we take nourishment. For as to what was commanded the ancients in a figure about the pouring out of blood—that is, to Noah himself after the flood (See Gen 9:6)—what it signified we have already shown, and most people understand (See Acts 15:29). And in the Acts of the Apostles this is read as commanded by the Apostles by way of a law, that the Gentiles should abstain only from fornication, and from things offered to idols, and from blood—that is, that they should eat no flesh whose blood had not been poured out. Which others understand not thus, but that it was commanded to abstain from blood, lest anyone defile himself with murder. To discuss this now would be long, and not necessary; because even if the Apostles then commanded this, that Christians should abstain from the blood of animals, lest they feed on strangled flesh, they seem to me to have chosen, for the time, a thing easy and in no way burdensome to those observing it, in which, along with the Israelites, the Gentiles too, on account of that corner stone joining the two in himself (See Eph 2:11–22), might observe something in common; and at the same time they might be admonished that, in the ark of Noah itself, when God commanded this, the Church of all nations was figured, the prophecy of which deed was now beginning to be fulfilled as the Gentiles came to the faith. But when that time had passed, in which those two walls—one coming from the circumcision, the other from the uncircumcision—although they harmonized in the corner stone, yet stood out more distinctly by certain properties of their own, and when the Church of the Gentiles became such that in it no carnal Israelite appears, what Christian now observes this, that he should not touch thrushes or smaller little birds except those whose blood has been poured out, or should not eat a hare if it was struck by hand on the neck and killed with no bloody wound? And those few who perhaps still dread to touch these things are laughed at by the rest; so has that verdict of truth held the minds of all in this matter: Not what enters your mouth defiles you, but what comes out (Mt 15:11)—condemning no nature of food which human society admits, but the sins which iniquity commits.

14. But now concerning the deeds of the ancients, both those which seem sins to foolish and unlearned men, when they are not, and those which are truly sins—why they were written down, kept, and rather commended with the veneration of Scripture itself—we have already shown with sufficient discourse; likewise concerning the curse of him who hangs on a tree (See Gal 3:13; Deut 21:23), and of him who has not raised up seed in Israel, we have already answered in the first place, in its proper place, when we earlier dissolved these objections. And absolutely all things—whether those which we have already discussed one by one in the earlier parts of this work, or those similar things which Faustus has set down in this discourse of his to which we are responding—we defend by the one most firm account of truth, which we have received from the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Whatever is written in those books of the Old Testament, we praise, accept, and approve as all most truly and most usefully written for eternal life; but those commandments in them which we do not observe by bodily action, we both most rightly understand to have been commanded then, and have learned to be shadows of things to come, and now know to be fulfilled. And through this, whoever then did not observe even those deeds which were commanded to be done for the sake of signifying, paid the penalties divinely appointed by a most right judgment—just as now, if anyone with sacrilegious rashness should dare to violate the sacraments of the New Testament, distinguished according to the reason of the time. For just as then just men, who did not even refuse death for those sacraments, are rightly praised, so now the holy martyrs for these. And as a sick man ought not to reprehend the medicinal teaching, if it prescribes one thing for him today, another tomorrow, prohibiting even what it had prescribed before—for so stands the reason of healing his body—so the human race, from Adam even to the end of the age, as long as the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul (See Wis 9:15), sick and wounded, ought not to reprehend the divine medicine, if in some things it prescribes this same thing, but in some things prescribes that one thing be observed first and another afterward; especially since it promised that it would prescribe something else.