And so, even though established in the error of Manichaeus, you could, by thinking, have seen that which is wont to happen in human affairs—that one man begets a son by the flesh, another adopts him by will, and thus one man has two fathers—if you did not read with a hostile mind. But why Matthew began from Abraham, descending down to Joseph, while Luke began from Joseph, ascending not to Abraham but to God, who made man and, by giving a commandment, gave him the power that, by believing, he might become a son of God; and why the one enumerated the generations themselves at the head of his book, while the other did so after the Lord the Savior had been baptized by John;
and what is meant by the number of generations according to Matthew, that they are arranged in three fourteens, which when summed up appear as one less; while the number of generations according to Luke, which is recorded at the Lord's baptism, reaches seventy-seven—which number the Lord himself commends in the remission of sins, saying, 'Not only seven times, but even seventy times seven'—: all this you could in no way track down, unless you either heard it from some catholic, not just anyone, but one who was a student of the divine Scriptures and, so far as he could, skilled; or, corrected yourselves from error, sought it with catholic piety, that you might receive; sought, that you might find; knocked, that you might enter. Wherefore, since that
which moved Faustus concerning the diversity of the generations—because in understanding the two fathers lay this knot—has been loosed by understanding nature and adoption, in vain did he wish to betake himself to the two evangelists and to withdraw from the other two, being more likely to offend those to whom he betook himself than those from whom he withdrew. For the saints do not love their choosers, if they find them deserters of their fellows. For they rejoice in unity, and in Christ they are one; and though one says one thing and another another, or one thing in one way and another in another way, yet they all speak the truth, and in no way contradictory to themselves, if the pious reader approach—if he read gently, not with a heretical mind whence he may quarrel, but with a faithful heart whence he may be edified, let him inquire.
Now therefore, since we have believed that the several evangelists undertook to relate the generations of the several fathers, such that one man should have two fathers—which is not foreign to the human race—our faith is not foreign to the truth. Wherefore, the evangelists now agreeing among themselves, as Faustus promised, yield somehow. Or does that which he added still move you? Yet not even so. 'It will not,' he says, 'be worthy to believe that God, even the God of the Christians, was born from a womb'—as though we believed that the divine nature itself came forth from a woman's womb. Did I not just now recall the apostle's testimony, where he says of the Jews: 'whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever'?
Christ therefore, our Lord and Savior, the true Son of God according to his divinity, and the true Son of Man according to the flesh, was born of a woman not from that which is 'over all, God blessed forever,' but from that weakness which he took from us, that in it he might die for us and heal it in us; not from the form of God, in which being he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, was he born of a woman, but from the form of a servant, which by taking he emptied himself. For he is not said to have emptied himself for any other reason than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God.
For that nature, by which in the form of God he is equal to the Father, remaining unchangeably, took our changeable nature, through which he might be born of a virgin. But you, though you shudder to commit the flesh of Christ to a virginal womb, have committed the very divinity of God not only to the wombs of men, but also to those of dogs and swine; you refuse to believe the flesh of Christ, once conceived in the womb of the virgin, in which God was not only not bound but not even changed—and yet you preach that the very part of God and the divine nature is, in the male seeds and female wombs of all men and beasts, in all conceptions throughout all lands and all waters and all breezes, bound, oppressed, defiled, and cannot afterward even be wholly set free!
BOOK FOUR. 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 this indeed is excessive impudence—to lay claim to a will which testifies that one is disinherited. Or do you not know that the Old Testament promises the land of the Canaanites, but nevertheless to the Jews, that is, to the circumcised, and to those who sacrifice, and abstain from pork and the other meats which Moses calls unclean, who observe the sabbaths and the solemnity of unleavened bread and the rest of such things, which its testator himself commanded them to observe? Since these things have pleased none of the Christians—for none of us keeps them—it is fitting that, having refused the inheritance, we should give back the will also.
This, then, is the reason why I think the Old Testament should be cast aside, unless you teach me something more prudent. But the second reason is that its inheritance is so wretched and corporeal, and so far from the goods of the soul, that after that blessed promise of the New Testament, which promises me the kingdom of heaven and everlasting life, even if its testator were to press it upon me for free, I would have disdained it. AUGUSTINE replied: That promises of temporal things are contained in the Old Testament, and that it is therefore called Old, 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 were to be fulfilled in us, upon whom the end of the ages has come, is not my conjecture but the apostolic understanding, since Paul, when he was speaking of such matters, said: 'All these things were figures of us,' and again: 'All these things happened to them in a figure; but they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come.' We therefore accept the Old Testament not for the sake of obtaining those promises, but for the sake of understanding in them the foretellings of the New Testament; for the testimony of the Old wins faith for the New.
Whence the Lord, after he rose from the dead and offered himself not only to be beheld by the disciples' eyes but also to be handled by their hands—lest, however, they should think anything was being done deceptively with their mortal and carnal senses—confirmed them rather from the testimony of the ancient books, saying: 'It behooved all things to be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms concerning me.' Our hope, therefore, is not fixed in the promise of temporal things, seeing that 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, by the Spirit of God revealing it to them, what was fitting for that time, and by what ways God
had determined, through all those deeds done and words spoken, to prefigure and foretell things to come; and their desire concerning the New Testament was greater; but the present corporeal function was furnished, by the old promises, for signifying the new things to come. Thus the tongue of those men was prophetic, and not only their tongue but their very life. The carnal people, however, clung to the promises of the present life. Concerning which people, nonetheless, things to come were being signified. But you do not understand these things, because, as the prophet said, 'Unless you believe, you will not understand.' For you are not instructed in the kingdom of heaven, that is, in the true catholic Church of Christ;
for if you were, you would bring forth from the riches of the holy Scriptures not only new things but also old. For the Lord himself says: 'Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a householder, bringing forth from his treasure new things and old.' And therefore, while you suppose that you hold only the new promises of God, you have remained in the oldness of the flesh and have brought in the newness of error. Of which newness the apostle says: 'But shun profane novelties of words; for they profit much toward impiety, and their speech creeps like a canker. Of whom are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and have overthrown the faith of some.'
Recognize that you flow forth from this same vein of falsehood, you who say that there is now only a resurrection of souls through the preaching of the truth, but deny that the resurrection of bodies, which the apostles preached, is to come. But what can you conceive spiritually, according to the inner man who is renewed in the knowledge of God, when, through the oldness of the flesh and through the images of carnal things in which your whole error is wrapped up, you do not hold corporeal things in possession but savor them as a phantasm? For you glory in despising and disdaining the land of the Canaanites, which was manifest and manifestly given to that people.
As though you did not so describe the land of light, cut off on one side from the land of the race of darkness as if by a wedge driven in and cleaving it, that it is neither found in the reality of things nor believed in the falsity of your imaginings; and therefore neither does that which is given sustain your life, nor does that which is desired corrupt your mind. BOOK FIVE. FAUSTUS said: Do you accept the Gospel? You ask me whether I accept it, in whom it appears that I accept this very thing, since I observe what it commands. Or ought I to inquire of you whether you accept it, in whom no marks of one accepting the Gospel are seen? I have left father and mother, wife, children, and the rest, which the Gospel commands—and you ask whether I accept the Gospel?
unless you still do not know what that is which is called the Gospel. For it is nothing other than the preaching and commandment of Christ. I have cast away gold and silver, and have ceased to keep brass in my belts, content with daily food, neither taking thought for the morrow nor bearing any anxiety about whence the belly may be filled or the body clothed. And you ask me whether I accept the Gospel? You see in me those beatitudes of Christ which make the Gospel, and you ask whether I accept it? You see one poor, you see one meek, you see one peacemaking, pure of heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, enduring persecutions and hatred for the sake of righteousness—and you doubt whether I accept the Gospel?
It is no wonder, then, that John the Baptist, having seen Jesus and likewise heard of his works, still asked whether he himself was the Christ—to whom Jesus did not even deign fittingly and deservedly to reply that he was himself, but sent back to him again those same works which he had long since heard: 'the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead rise again,' and the rest. Which I too might not undeservedly do concerning you, if, when you repeatedly ask whether I accept the Gospel, I were to say: I have left all my possessions—father, mother, wife, children, gold, silver, eating, drinking, delights, pleasures. Consider this a sufficient answer to your inquiries, and that you will be blessed if you are not scandalized in me.
But, he says, to accept the Gospel is not this alone—that you do what it commands—but also that you believe all the things which are written in it, of which the first is that Jesus was born. But neither, again, is it this alone to accept the Gospel—that you believe Jesus was born—but also that you do what it commands. And if you therefore 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, in the meantime, we are equal, until we examine even the parts; or if that contempt of the precepts does not prejudice you against professing that you accept the Gospel, why should the condemned genealogy prejudice me toward this?
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, being imperfect, judge me imperfect? Each of us needs the other. But if, which is more certain, to accept the Gospel consists in the observance of the heavenly commandments alone, you are in a double way base, who, as it is commonly said, being a deserter, accuse a soldier. And yet, come, let us grant, since you so wish, that these two are parts of the perfect faith, one of which consists indeed in word, that is, to confess Christ born, the other in work, which is the observance of the precepts. You see, then, how arduous and more difficult a part I have chosen for myself; do you see how very light and easier a part. And not without cause does the crowd flee to you,
and flee from me, not knowing indeed that the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. What is it, then, that you provoke me, if, having undertaken the more difficult part of the faith, I have left you, as to one weak, the easier? But I, he says, think this part of the faith more efficacious and more suitable for bestowing salvation on souls—the part which you have left, that is, to confess Christ born. Come then, let us ask Christ himself, and from his own mouth let us learn from what the occasion of our salvation may best arise for us. Which of men shall enter into your kingdom, O Christ? 'He who does,' he says, 'the will of my Father who is in heaven.' He did not say: he who confesses 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 observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you'—he did not say: teaching them that I was born, but that they should keep the commandments. Likewise elsewhere: 'You shall be my friends, if you do the things which I command you'—he did not say: if you believe me to have been born. Again: 'If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love,' and many other things. And also on the mount, when he taught, saying, 'Blessed are the poor,' 'Blessed are the meek,' 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' 'Blessed are the pure in heart,' 'Blessed are those who mourn,' 'Blessed are those who hunger,' 'Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake,' nowhere did he say: 'Blessed are those who confess 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 are at the right hand: 'I was hungry, and you fed me; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink,' and the rest; 'therefore receive the kingdom.' He did not say: because you believed me to have been born, receive the kingdom. And also to the rich man seeking eternal life he says: 'Go, sell all that you have, and follow me'; he did not say: believe me to have been born, that you may live forever. Behold, therefore, to my portion, which I have chosen for myself out of the twofold faith, as you will have it, everywhere the kingdom, life, blessedness is promised; but to yours nowhere. Either show me where it is written that he is blessed, or shall receive the kingdom, or shall have eternal life, who confesses that he was born of a woman.
In the meantime, however, if even this is a part of the faith, it does not have blessedness. But when we shall have proved that it is not even a part of the faith, what will happen? Surely you will be empty—which itself will certainly be demonstrated. But for the present this is enough for our purpose, that this portion of ours is crowned with the beatitudes. To which, nevertheless, there accrues also that other blessedness from the confession of speech as well, in that we confess Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God—which Jesus himself equally testifies with his own mouth, saying to Peter: 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.'
Wherefore we hold, not one part of the faith as you supposed, but two, and both alike valid, and in both alike we are called blessed by Christ, because, exercising one of them by works, we proclaim the other without blasphemy. AUGUSTINE replied: I have already noted above how often the Lord Jesus Christ calls himself the Son of Man, and with how great vanity the Manichaeans bring in a fable of their abominable error concerning some fictitious first man, whom they preach to be not earthly but clothed with deceitful elements, against the apostle who says, 'The first man is of the earth, earthly'; and with how great care the same apostle warned us, saying, 'If anyone announce to you anything besides what we have announced to you, let him be anathema.'
Wherefore it remains that we should believe Christ to be the Son of Man just as he is proclaimed by apostolic truth, not as he is fabricated by the falsehood of the Manichaeans. 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, 'Be mindful that Christ Jesus rose from the dead, of the seed of David according to my Gospel,' it is sufficiently apparent in what manner we ought to believe Christ to be the Son of Man—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 offenses and rise again for our justification. And therefore he calls himself both, the Son of God and the Son of Man.
Whence, that I may not go through very many passages, in one place in the Gospel according to John it is thus written: 'Amen, amen I say to you, that the hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear shall live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself; and he has given him power also to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.' He said: they shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and he said: because he is the Son of Man. For according to that which he said, 'he is the Son of Man,' he received power to execute judgment, because in that very form he is to come to judgment, so that he may be seen by both the good and the wicked. In which form he also ascended into heaven, and that voice sounded to the disciples:
'He shall come in like manner as you have seen him going into heaven.' For according to that which the Son of God, being God, is equal to the Father and is one with the Father, he shall not be seen by the wicked; for 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' Since, therefore, 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 proclaims and is proclaimed by the apostles—that is, both the true Son of God and the true Son of Man:
You Manichaeans, who believe in one who is false and deceitful, in the son of a false and deceitful man — since you teach that even the god of the opposing race, terrified by the tumult, sent his own members to be tortured, and afterward could not wholly purify them — see how estranged you are from the eternal life which Christ promises to those who believe in him. But he said to Peter, who confessed him to be the Son of God: 'Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona.' Did he therefore promise nothing to those who would believe in him as the Son of Man, since he himself is both the Son of God and the Son of Man? Indeed, you have eternal life plainly promised to those who believe in the Son of Man.
'As Moses,' he says, 'lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.' 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 is able to give eternal life, because he himself is true God and eternal life, as the same John says in his epistle, where he also declares that he is antichrist who denies that Christ has come in the flesh. Why then do you boast, as of the fulfilment of his commandments, that you perform what is prescribed in the Gospel? For what would those things profit, where there is no true faith, even if they were truly fulfilled by you? Have you not heard the apostle saying:
'If I distribute all my goods to the poor, and give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing'? Why then do you boast, as of Christian poverty, when you lack Christian love? For even robbers have among themselves what they call love, owing to one another a criminal and shameful complicity — yet not the love which the apostle commends. And in order to distinguish it from all that is to be condemned and rejected, he says in another place: 'The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.' Whence then can you have true love, arising from a feigned faith?
Or when will it ever weary you to defend your faith with lies? — when you both proclaim that your first man fought with his enemies (who remained in the truth of their own nature) by a mutable deceit, and persuade men that this Christ, who says 'I am the truth,' lied about the appearance of his flesh, the death of the cross, the wounds of his passion, the scars of his resurrection. Accordingly, you wish to be set above your own Christ, if, while he lies, you announce the truth. But if you wish to follow your Christ, who among you would not beware of falsehood, so that even in these commandments which you say you fulfil, there is nothing but sheer deceit?
For when Faustus dared to say that you do not carry bronze in your belts — unless perhaps he spoke truly for this reason, that you keep not bronze in your belts but even gold in little chests and in purses — these things would not be censured in you, were it not that you profess one thing and live otherwise. There is still living among men that Constantius, who is now already our brother, a catholic Christian, who had gathered many of you together at Rome into his own house for the fulfilment of the precepts of Manichaeus — precepts quite vain and foolish indeed, yet which you esteem great: and when your weakness gave way before them, you were scattered, each into his own way.
Whence those who wished to persevere in them made a schism from your society, and because they sleep on mats (mattae), they are called Mattarii; from whose bedding the feathers of Faustus and his goatskin coverlets were far different — with which abundance of luxuries he not only disdained the Mattarii, but even the house of his own father, a poor man of Mileum. Away, then, with your ruinous pretence — if not in your morals, at least in your writings — lest your tongue seem to strive with your life, like that first man with the race of darkness, fighting not with lying elements but with lying words. But lest anyone censure me for saying these things against men who do not fulfil what is prescribed to them, rather than against the very sect of this most vain error, I say this:
The very precepts of Manichaeus are such that, if you do not keep them, you are deceivers; but if you do keep them, you are deceived. For Christ did not command you not to pluck up an herb lest you commit murder — he who did not forbid his disciples, when passing through the cornfield and hungry, to pluck the ears on the sabbath, whereby he confuted both the Jews then present and the Manichaeans to come: the former, because it was done on the sabbath; the latter, because it was done at all. But Manichaeus, forsooth, commanded that with your idle hands you should live off the murders of others. And those indeed are false murders, but yours are true, when with such a doctrine of demons you slaughter wretched souls. Yet there is present in him that heretical bombast and intolerable pride.
'You see in me,' he says, 'those beatitudes of Christ which make up the Gospel, and you ask whether I accept it? You see one who is poor, you see one who is meek, one who is peaceable, pure in heart, mourning, hungering, thirsting, enduring persecutions and hatred for righteousness' sake — and you doubt whether I accept the Gospel?' If to be righteous were this — to justify oneself — this man would have flown into heaven by his own words, while he was uttering these things. But I do not inveigh against the delicacies of Faustus, known to all hearers of the Manichaeans, and especially to those who are at Rome: I set forth such a Manichaean as Constantius required, when he demanded that those precepts be fulfilled — not such a one as he did not wish to appear.
And yet how do I see even that one to be poor in spirit, who is so proud that he believes his own soul to be God, and, a captive, is not ashamed of it? How meek, who prefers to insult so great an evangelical authority rather than believe it? How peaceable, who does not think that the divine nature itself — by which God is whatever he is, who alone truly is — could ever have possessed perpetual peace? How pure in heart, in which so many sacrilegious fabrications are in tumult? How mourning — unless mourning his God, taken captive and bound, until he be released and escape, yet in some part cut short, which shall be bound by the Father in the globe of darkness and shall not be mourned?
How hungering and thirsting for righteousness — which Faustus did not add in his writings, I suppose, lest he should seem to himself to lack it, if he confessed that he still hungered and thirsted for it? But what righteousness do these hunger and thirst for, whose perfect righteousness will be to triumph, moreover, over their brothers condemned in the globe — brothers who sinned by no fault of their own, but were inexpiably infected by the hostile corruption into which the Father sent them? How do you endure persecutions and hatred for righteousness' sake, you for whom to preach and persuade these sacrileges is righteousness? For which impious perversity, how little and almost nothing you suffer, thanks to the gentleness of Christian times — why do you not consider this?
But as though you were speaking to the blind and the foolish, you wish it to be as it were a great token of your righteousness that you endure reproaches and suffer persecution. Moreover, if each man is the more righteous the more grievous the things he undergoes — I forbear to say what is very easy to see, how much more grievous the sufferings borne by others polluted with all manner of crimes and shameful deeds — this I say:
If, under the name of Christ, however usurped and assumed, whoever suffers persecution is to be said even now to hold the true faith and righteousness, then grant that he be of truer faith and greater righteousness whom we can show to have endured far more grievous things than you; and now let thousands of our martyrs meet you, and Cyprian especially, by whose very letters it is taught that he believed in Christ born to him of the Virgin Mary. For this faith, which you detest, he came even to the sword and to death, together with flocks of Christians who then believed thus and thus, and even more grievously, died.