Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 22/37

who has believed in Manichaeus — even a woman who bears children — as yours, and call her your Sibyl, though she does not so much as marry. But indeed many are called Catholic Christians, and are adulterers, robbers, misers, drunkards, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. But among you, in your so tiny and almost non-existent number, are not the majority such, while some among the pagans are not such? Do you therefore say that the pagans who are not such are better than you? 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 disparaged on this account, that many wish to be reckoned by its name and to be healed through it.

For that fewness must be recognized which the Lord especially commends amid the vast and innumerable multitude spread throughout the whole world: which fewness of the holy and the faithful, nevertheless — as must often be commended — is called a fewness, as of grains in comparison with the multitude of chaff; yet by itself it makes so great a mass of wheat that it surpasses by an incomparable multitude all your approved and reprobate alike, whom the truth reprobates together. Behold, we are not a schism from the Gentiles, from whom we differ very greatly for the better; but neither are you this, for you differ very greatly from them for the worse. BOOK TWENTY-ONE. 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 long to know. Because you hand down two principles, of good things and of evil. It is true that we confess two principles; but of these we call one God, the other hyle, or — to speak in the common and customary way — a demon. But if you suppose that this signifies two gods, you could, when a physician discourses on sickness and health, likewise suppose these to be two healths; and when someone names good and evil, you could suppose these to be two goods; and hearing of abundance and want, you would suppose these to be two abundances. What of it?

If, when I discourse on white and black, and on cold and hot, and on sweet and bitter, you were to say that I have exhibited two whites and two hots and two sweets, would you not seem out of your mind and of a most unsound brain? So too, when I teach two principles, God and hyle, I ought not on that account to seem to you to be exhibiting two gods. Or, because we assign every maleficent power to hyle and the beneficent to God, as is fitting, do you therefore think it makes no difference whether we call each of them God? But if that is so, you could, on hearing of poison and antidote, think it makes no difference whether each is called antidote, since each of them has its own power, each does something and works something.

Likewise, on hearing of a physician and a poisoner, you will call both physicians; and on hearing of the just and the unjust, you could call both just, because each of them does something. But if it is absurd to do this, how much more absurd is it to think God and hyle two gods, because each of them works something? Wherefore this argument is inept and quite feeble in force, so that, because you cannot answer me concerning the matter, you stir up ill will over mere names. For neither do I deny that at times we too call the adverse nature 'god,' but not according to our faith — rather according to the name already presumed for it by its worshipers, who imprudently reckon it a god:

just as the Apostle also says, 'The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers' — naming it 'god' indeed, because it was already so called by its own worshipers, but adding that it 'blinds their minds,' so that from this it may be understood that it is not the true God. AUGUSTINE replied: We are indeed accustomed to hear of two gods in your disputations, which, although at first you denied, yet a little afterward you yourself confessed, as if rendering the reason why you say this, because the Apostle also says: 'The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers.' This sentence indeed most of us so punctuate that they say the true God blinded the minds of the unbelievers. For when they have read 'in whom God,' they suspend the utterance; and then they add:

'of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelievers.' For even if you do not punctuate it thus, but for the sake of exposition so alter the order of the words: 'in whom God hath 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. This is done not by malice, but by justice, as the same Paul says elsewhere: 'Is God unjust, who inflicteth wrath?' Likewise elsewhere: 'What shall we say then?' he says; 'Is there injustice with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I shall be merciful.' When therefore he had first laid down what must be held unshaken,

namely that there is no injustice with God, mark a little afterward what he says: 'But if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath, which were fitted for destruction; and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he hath prepared unto glory' — and so forth. Certainly here it can in no way be said that one God is he who shows his wrath and makes his power known in the vessels that are fitted for destruction, and another he who shows the riches in the vessels of mercy. For that one and the same God does both, the apostolic doctrine testifies. Hence too is that saying:

'For this cause God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, that they should dishonor their own bodies among themselves'; and a little afterward: 'For this cause God gave them up unto passions of ignominy'; likewise a little afterward: 'And as they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate sense.' Behold how the true and just God blinds the minds of unbelievers. For never in these words of the Apostle which I have recalled is any other God understood than He who sent His Son, saying: 'For judgment am I come into this world, that they who see not may see, and they who see may become blind.' For here too it appears sufficiently to the minds of the faithful how God blinds the minds of unbelievers.

For something hidden precedes in hidden things, where God carries out the most just examination of His judgment, that the minds of some may be blinded, of others illumined. To whom it is most truly said: 'Thy judgments are a great deep.' Marveling at the impenetrable height of this depth, the Apostle exclaims: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments!' — and so forth. But you, not being able to discern what God does by benefit and what by judgment, because both from your heart and from your mouth our psaltery is far off, wherein it is said:

'I will sing of mercy and judgment to thee, O Lord' — whatever offends you on account of the weakness of human mortality, you attribute altogether away from the will and judgment of the true God; having, forsooth, another god ready, an evil one, whom not truth shows you but vanity feigns for you, to whom you may attribute not only whatever you do unjustly, but also whatever you justly suffer, thus attributing to God the benefits of His gifts and taking from Him the judgments of His penalties — as if it were of another that Christ said He has prepared eternal fire for the wicked, than of Him who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust.

Whence you do not understand that so great a goodness here and so great a severity there pertain to one God, save because you know not how to sing of mercy and judgment. Is not the very same one who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust, yet breaks the natural branches and grafts in the wild olive against nature? Does not the Apostle there speak of that one and the same: 'Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them indeed that are fallen, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in goodness'? Surely you have heard, surely you have noted, how he neither takes from God judiciary severity nor from man free will.

It is hidden, it is deep, it is secluded 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 therefore please to prattle against the divine judgments, because they are unsearchable? How much more fitting, how much more suitable to our small measure is it to tremble there where Paul trembled, and to exclaim: 'O the depth of the riches of the knowledge and wisdom of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!' How much better to marvel thus at what you are not able to investigate, than on that account to wish to feign another, evil god, because you could not comprehend the one good God?

For it is not about a name that the matter is, but about a work. For Faustus quickly seems to have defended himself when he says: 'We do not say two gods, but God and hyle.' But when you shall have inquired what he calls hyle, you will hear plainly a second god described. For if the formless matter, capable of corporeal forms, were called hyle by him — as it was called by the ancients — none of us would charge that it is called a god. But now, how great is the error, how great the madness, either to call the material of bodies the maker of bodies, or to deny that the maker of bodies is God? For, because what the true God makes — that is, the qualities and forms of bodies, of elements, of animals, so that they are bodies, elements, animals — this you say some other, I know not who, makes.

By whatever name you call it, you are rightly said, by your error, to introduce another god. For in this one matter you err twice with a sacrilegious error: once, indeed, in that you say the things which God made are made by him whom you are ashamed to confess as God — but in no way will you bring it about that he is not God, unless you deny that he makes such things as none but God makes; and again, in that the things which the good God makes good, you both suppose to be made by an evil one and to be evil, shuddering with childish feeling at things which do not suit the weakness of penal mortality, and loving the things that do suit it. Accordingly you call evil him who made the snake, but this sun you think so great a good that you believe it was not made by God, but brought forth or emitted from Him.

But the true God — that you do not yet believe in Him grieves me exceedingly — both made the snake among other lower things, and the sun among other higher things, and, still higher, in things not corporeal but heavenly, indeed in spiritual things, made many things far better than this light, which no carnal man whatever perceives — how much less you, who, since you detest the flesh, detest nothing other than your own rule, by which you measure good and evil! For there can be no thought in you either of evils, save such as offend the carnal sense, or of goods, save such as delight the carnal gaze. Therefore, that I may consider these works of God at the very bottom of things — earthly,

weak, mortal, but nonetheless works of God, such as we are able to see — I am ineffably moved to the praise of their Creator, who is so utterly 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 it is everywhere perfect in perfecting each in its own kind. For it does not found the universe in individual things, but, founding individual things toward the embrace of the universe, it presents itself whole even to individual things, making and disposing all things fittingly in their own places and orders, and bestowing on all, particularly and universally, what is congruous.

Behold, here in this as it were lowest floor of the whole creation, look upon 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. For this small measure, received from the best Creator, they contribute as it were in common to the universe, each fulfilling the portion of its own kind, so that with these lowest things all good things exist, among which there are for them things higher and better. Yet attend, and give me any one animal, however abject, whose soul hates its own flesh, and does not rather nourish and cherish it, and quicken and rule it by vital motion, and in a certain manner administer, for the smallness of its own kind, a certain universe of its own, reconciled to itself for the guarding of its safety.

For in that the rational soul chastises its own body and subjects it to servitude, lest the perception of wisdom be hindered by immoderate earthly appetite, even so it assuredly loves its own flesh, which it lawfully subdues and orders to obedience. Finally, you yourselves, although by a carnal error you detest the flesh, cannot but love your own flesh and take counsel for its safety and soundness, avoiding all blows and falls and the intemperateness by which it is injured, and 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.

What of the vital organs in the flesh itself, the fitting-together of the whole form, the members for working, the vessels for perceiving, all distinguished in their own places and offices and woven together in concordant unity by a measured moderation, by an equality of numbers, by an order of weights — do they not indicate their maker, the true God, to whom it is truly said: 'Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight'? If therefore you had a heart not perverse and corrupted with vain fables, you would behold His invisible things, understood even through these things which are made in this lowest and carnal creature. For whence come to these the things I have recalled, save from Him by whose unity every measure is established, by whose wisdom every beauty is formed, by whose law every order is disposed?

But if you have not an eye to behold these things, let apostolic authority lead you. For the Apostle, when he was giving precepts concerning the holy love which husbands ought to have toward their wives, took his example from the soul of one who loves. 'He that loveth his wife,' he says, 'loveth himself; for no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ the Church.' Behold, in your very sight is the whole carnal substance! See how, in every animal reconciled to itself for safety, this communion of nature carries the animal to love its own flesh;

for this is not in men only — who, when they live rightly, not only take counsel for the safety of their flesh, but also tame and rein in carnal motions to the use of reason — but even the beasts flee pain, dread destruction; and whatever can dissever and sunder from its concordant juncture that framework of members and the coupling of flesh and spirit, they avoid with what agility they can, themselves also nourishing and cherishing their own flesh. 'For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth,' he says, 'and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the Church.' See from what point and to what height he has ascended;

behold, if you can, what force the creature draws from the Creator — from the very heavenly array down to flesh and blood, bounded by the fullness of the whole, adorned with variety of forms, ordered by the grades of things. Again, the same Apostle, when he was teaching us a matter plainly great and divine and hidden — concerning the diverse spiritual gifts that are nonetheless in harmony toward unity — gave a likeness from this very flesh of ours, whose maker, 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, it will not weary me to insert into this work that whole passage from his epistle to the Corinthians: 'But concerning spiritual things, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

You know that, when you were Gentiles, you were led, being led away, to idols without voice, however you were led. Wherefore I make known to you that no man speaking in the Spirit of God saith anathema to Jesus; and no man can say "the Lord Jesus" but in the Holy Spirit. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all things in all. But to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit unto 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 tongues: but all these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each his own as He will. For as the body is one and hath many members, but all the members of the body, though they be many, are one body, so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and we have all drunk of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body? Or if the ear should say, "Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body?

And if the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now God hath set the members, each one of them, in the body as He willed. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of thee"; nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." Nay, much more, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those which we think to be the less honorable members of the body, upon these we put more abundant honor; and those parts of us that are uncomely have more abundant comeliness; but our comely parts have no need of it. But God hath tempered the body together.

to that member which lacked it He gave the greater honor, so that there might be no division in the body, but that it might be one and the same, so that the members might have care one for another; and whether one member suffers, all the members suffer together, or whether one member is glorified, all the members rejoice together. If there is in you any—I will not say Christian faith, so that you might believe the Apostle, but any human sense whatever, so that you might discern what is manifest—let each one behold and consider these things in his own self: how true, how certain they are, how great in what is small and how good in what is lowest, since indeed the Apostle sets these things forth in praise, so that through these lowly bodily things which are seen, those sublime spiritual things which are not seen might more easily be understood.

Therefore, concerning these members and of our body, which the Apostle thus commends and thus praises, whoever denies that God is their maker—you see whom he contradicts, proclaiming to us something beyond what we have received. What need is there, then, that he should be refuted by me rather than be anathematized by all Christians? The Apostle says: God has tempered the body; and this fellow says: 'It is hyle (matter), not God.' What could be more openly to be anathematized than to be refuted, in these enmities? Did the Apostle here also, when he said 'God,' add 'of this world'? Where too, even if anyone should understand it of the devil, that he blinds the minds of unbelievers, we do not deny that this is by wicked persuasions; and those who consent to these lose the light of righteousness, God repaying what is just.

All these things we read in the holy Scriptures. For that too was said concerning seduction coming from without: I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his craftiness, so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity which is in Christ. Like to which is: Evil communications corrupt good manners; and that whereby each man is his own seducer: But he who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, deceives his own self; and that concerning God's vengeance, which I mentioned above: God delivered them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting. So also in the old books, when it had first said:

God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living; a little later it says: By the envy of the devil death entered into the world. And again concerning death itself, lest men should place themselves outside blame, it says: But the ungodly with their hands and words summoned it, and esteeming it a friend they wasted away. And elsewhere: Good things and evil, life and death, riches and poverty, are from the Lord God. Here men, being disturbed, do not understand that in one and the same evil work, not by something else following afterward which will be manifest, but by a certain vengeance immediately accompanying, one thing comes from the cunning of the persuader, another from the wickedness of the one willing, another from the justice of the one punishing: when the devil suggests, man consents, God forsakes.

Wherefore in an evil work, that is, in the blinding of unbelievers, if the devil also be understood on account of the malignity of his persuading, so that it be thus distinguished: 'the god of this world,' it does not seem absurd to me. For 'god' is not spoken without an addition, since 'of this world' is joined to it, that is, of ungodly men who wish to flourish only in this world; according to which it is also called 'the evil world,' as it is written: That He might deliver us from the present evil world. For such too is that saying: Whose god is their belly; unless the 'whose' were there, it would in no way say 'god the belly.' Nor in the psalm could demons be called 'gods,' unless 'of the nations' were added; for so it is written: For all the gods of the nations are demons.

But here it is neither 'the god of this world,' nor 'whose god is the belly,' nor 'the gods of the nations are demons,' but it is set down simply: God tempered the body; which cannot be understood except of the true God, the Creator of all things. For those things are said with censure, but this was said with praise. Unless perhaps Faustus understands that God tempered the body not by the arrangement of the members, that is, by fashioning and constructing, but by the admixture of His own light—namely, that some other, who fabricated it, placed these members thus distinguished and set in their seats, while God tempered the malice of this fabric by mingling His own goodness. For with such fables they stupefy childish souls;

but God, coming to the aid of the little ones through the mouths of the saints, did not permit them to be able to say even this. For you have also a little above: God placed the members, each single one in the body, as He willed. Who now would not understand that according to this God is called the temperer of the body, in that He fabricated the body out of many members, which preserve the functions of diverse works in the frame of unity? Let the Manichaeans, then, say: whether the animals which, according to their ravings, hyle had fabricated in the race of darkness, before God had mingled His own light with them, did not have that concord of members which the Apostle thus praises—whether there the head would say to the feet, or the eye to the hand: I have no need of thee.

Never did they say this, nor could they say it. For they attribute to them such acts and works: they crept, they walked, they swam, they flew, each according to its kind; they also saw and heard and perceived by the other senses; with suitable nourishment and temperaments they nourished and cherished their own bodies. Hence too there was at hand the fecundity of offspring; for they attribute to them marriages as well. All these things assuredly, which Manichaeus censures as the works of hyle, cannot come to pass 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 then?

What of the fact that there were certain ones there which even spoke, so that when they made speeches all the creeping things, four-footed beasts, flying things, and swimming things heard, understood, and consented to them? 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. Indeed this Faustus, in order to prattle these vanities eloquently, came late even to the discipline of composing discourse; and although he was of keen wit, yet by reading he wore out his stomach, so that so few gave assent to him when he spoke. O wretched man, who was born in this light and not in those shades!

For there, as he made speeches against the light, every biped, every many-footed creature, every serpent too, from the dragon down to the snail, would gladly hear him and briskly obey; but here, as he disputed against the darkness, many named him more eloquent than learned, and many named him a most perverse seducer; while among a few Manichaeans applauding him as a great master, no beast obeyed him, nor did even his nag know anything from that doctrine—as though the divine portion had been compacted in all animals for this very end, that they should become stupid. What is this, I ask? Awake at last, wretched men, and compare in your fable the former time of all living creatures and the present: then in their own land, now in this world;

then bodies were strong, now they are weak; then the sight of their eyes was keen for living with the delight of invading the region of God, now so dulled that it turns away from the rays of the sun; then the minds of the animals were sharp for understanding the speech of him who made orations, now dull and utterly estranged from any such capacity; then such great and such potent natural eloquence, now with so much study and labor barely a little and scanty. O how great goods did the race of darkness lose by the commingling of good! This very Faustus, in this very discourse to which I now reply, seemed elegantly to set opposite one another many contraries: health and sickness, abundance and want, white and black, hot and cold, sweet and bitter: