Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 23/37

among which I forbear to say anything of white and black, or whether there is any weight of good and evil in colors, that they should say white pertains to God, but black to hyle. Since they maintain that hyle created all kinds of flying things, if God sprinkled the white color upon their feathers, where were the crows hidden when the swans were suffused with whiteness? Likewise concerning hot and cold there is no need to reckon; for each, applied temperately, is wholesome, but applied intemperately, is destructive. Let us look at the rest. Good and evil, which perhaps he ought to have placed first among these same contraries. So he seems to have placed them, wishing them to be understood as general, namely, so that to the good pertain health, abundance, white,

hot, sweet pertain to the good, but to the evil sickness, want, black, cold, bitter—how unskillfully and inconsiderately, let him see who can. But I, lest I be thought to cavil against the man, object nothing about white and black, hot and cold, sweet and bitter, and I will pass over 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 growing black, grows sweet—that is, by having more of evil it 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 take fever?

I do not, then, object these things, which perhaps he mentioned incautiously, or rather as instances of contraries of any sort than of good and evil, especially since they said that the fire of the race of darkness was never cold, but that its heat was in any case evil. But to leave these aside, let us look at those which he thus mentioned as goods among these contraries, so that he would not have it doubted therein: health, abundance, sweetness.

Was there, then, in that race no health of bodies, in which those animals were able both to be born and to grow, to beget and so to endure—so that even when some of them were pregnant (as they dote in their folly), being captured and bound up in heaven, and their offspring, not even of full term but abortive, falling from on high onto the chosen earth, were able both to live and to grow and to propagate these kinds of flesh, which are now innumerable?

Or was there no abundance there, where trees were able to be born not only in waters and winds, but even in fire and smoke, and to be enriched with such great fecundity, that from their fruits animals each of its own kind were begotten, and were preserved, nourished and fed by the fruitfulness of those trees—whose fatness the fecundity of offspring also would attest by their gladness—especially where there was no labor of agriculture, nor any inclemency of summer and winter? For neither did the sun there go round, so that the seasons of the year should run their course in alternation. Accordingly there was a perpetual fertility of the trees, to which the element and the nourishment of their own kind, as it had been present for begetting, so was ever at hand for their fruit-bearing, and made the fruit never to be lacking;

just as we see citron trees bear flowers and fruit the whole year long, if they are continually watered. Great, then, was the abundance there, and great the security of possessing it; for not even hail was feared, where there were no exactors of light, whom you fable that thunders set in motion. But sweet and pleasant foods—if they did not have their own, they would never crave them, nor would their bodies be invigorated by them. For so the matter stands, that according to the suitability of each body 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 by some unpleasantness. Are not we men ourselves so, that very often the one craves the food which the other abhors?

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 a kind far different find that pleasant which to us is bitter! Or would goats otherwise be strung up to gnaw the wild olive? For just as to some by disease of men honey is bitter, so to that nature of the flock the wild olive is sweet. Thus there is insinuated to prudent examiners of things the order of what a thing avails, when, namely, its own things are applied and rendered to each, and how great a good this is, from the lowest even to the highest, from things bodily even to things spiritual.

And so in the race of darkness, when an animal of some element fed on that food which was born in its own element, without doubt the very suitability produced pleasantness; but if it chanced upon food of another element, the very unsuitability would produce an offense to the sense of the taster—which offense, whether bitterness or harshness or unpleasantness or anything else whatever, or, if it is so excessive that by an alien force it breaks apart the frame and concord of the body and thus destroys it or takes away its strength, is even called poison—and this only through unsuitability, since to another kind through suitability it is food: just as bread, which is our daily fare, if a hawk take it, it is killed; and we, if hellebore, on which very many cattle feed;

yet of this herb, when applied in a certain measure, it is even a medicine. And if Faustus knew or considered this, he would certainly 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—since the same thing and the same nature, taken or applied now suitably, now unsuitably, either profits or harms. And so, according to their fable, their god could be said to have been poison to the race of darkness, whose bodies, so firm, he so corrupted that he rendered them most feeble; but because the light itself was captured, oppressed, and corrupted, they were poison to each other in turn.

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 in relation to each other? Afterward, if there be need, we shall inquire which of these is better or worse. Meanwhile, since they were two goods in themselves, it is thus considered: God reigned in his own land, hyle reigned in its; the health of the reigning ones both there and here; the abundance of fruits both there and here; the fecundity of offspring on both sides; the sweetness of their own pleasures among both. But that race, they say, apart from the fact that it was evil to the neighboring light, was evil also in itself. Meanwhile I have already told many of its goods; if you too can show its evils, there will be two good kingdoms, but that one the better, where there was no evil.

What evils, then, do you say were of this race? They laid one another waste, he says, they wounded one another, killed, consumed. If there had been leisure there for this alone, how could so great throngs be begotten, nourished, brought to perfection there? There was, therefore, also there both rest and peace. Yet let us confess that that was the better kingdom, where there was no discord; but I would call these two goods much more fittingly than the one good and the other evil, so that that be better where neither did individuals harm their own selves nor one another, but this a lower good, where, although they opposed one another, yet each single animal guarded its own safety, integrity, and nature.

Nevertheless, that prince of darkness at least can be compared to your god at no very great distance, since no one resisted him, and all things served him as he reigned; and when he made speeches all things followed him—which could not come to pass without great peace and concord. For there are the happy kingdoms, where with the full consent of all the kings are obeyed. To this is added that to that prince there were subject not only those of his own kind, that is, the bipeds whom you call the parents of men, but even all the kinds of the other animals, and they were turned at his nod, doing what he commanded, believing what he persuaded. Saying these things, do you suppose the hearts of men so deaf that they should expect another god to be named by you, whom they see plainly and openly described?

For if the strength of this prince could do this, it was great power; if his honor, great renown; if love, great concord; if fear, great discipline. If among all these goods there were any evils, is it therefore now to be called an evil nature, except by those who know not what they say? Furthermore, if you think its nature evil for this reason, that it was not only evil toward the other nature, but even had evil in itself, do you deem no evil to be the hard necessity which your god suffered before the commingling of the contrary nature—so that he was compelled to war with it and to send his own members into its jaws, to be so oppressed that it could not be wholly purged? Behold, there was even in itself a great evil, before it was mingled with it—which alone you call evil.

For either it could not be harmed and corrupted by the race 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 proclaims. What then? Does not that very corruptibility—by which indeed that nature was not yet being corrupted, but nevertheless could be corrupted by another—seem to you an evil in your god? This too, who would not see: that either there was no foreknowledge there—where it is now for you to consider whether it be no defect of God to lack foreknowledge and to be wholly 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 certainly acknowledge.

Or did it not fear lest at any moment the time should come when its 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 his very members, which here were about to suffer such great evils, surely feared. Or did they not know this was to come? Then to some portion of the substance of your god foreknowledge was assuredly lacking. Number the evils in your highest good. Or did they for this reason not fear, because they equally foresaw that their liberation and triumph would follow? Certainly they feared at least for their fellows, whom they knew would be alienated from their own kingdom by eternal chains in that lump.

Or was there no charity there, so that there would be no brotherly compassion for those very ones who, with no preceding sin of their own, were incurring eternal punishments? What then? Were not those very souls, to be bound in the lump, themselves also members of your god? Is it not one kind and one substance? They at least, foreknowing their everlasting bond to come, surely feared, surely grieved. Or, if they did not know this was to come, one part of your god was provident, another improvident. How then is it one and the same substance? Since, then, such great evils were there too, before there was any commingling of alien evil, why do you glory in that as a pure and simple and supreme good?

Therefore, even in these two natures considered in themselves, you are compelled to confess either two goods or two evils. We grant to you: if you shall say two evils, that you may call whichever of these you please the worse; but if two goods, call whichever of these you please the better—there will afterward be a more diligent consideration—provided only that that error of yours be removed, whereby you say there are two principles of two natures, good and evil, and plainly two gods, one good and the other evil. Now indeed, if a thing is evil for this reason, that it harms another, they harmed each other in turn; one part will have been more wicked, because it first coveted what was 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—which you are wont imprudently and impudently to reprehend—but much more grievously. Choose, then, which you would call the worse: the one that first wished to harm, or the one that both wished and was able to harm more. For this one desired to enjoy the light after its own measure; that one uprooted it utterly. This one, if it had fulfilled what it coveted, would certainly have done itself no harm; but that one, in order to overturn its hostile adversity to the very roots, gravely harmed even its own part. As is that most notorious frenzied sentiment, committed to the memory of certain writings: Let friends perish, provided that enemies fall along with them.

For a part of God was sent to inexpiable contamination, that there might be something whereby the lump might be covered, in which the living enemy is to be buried forever; for it will be so feared even when conquered, will so terrify when shut up, that the everlasting misery of the part of God should confer some sort of security on the rest of God. O great innocence of goodness! Behold, your god too will do that for which you horribly accuse the race of darkness—namely, that it harms both its own and others. This very thing that final lump, in which both the enemy is shut in and the citizen is afflicted, altogether convicts in your god; nay rather, that part which you call god surpasses it in harming both others and its own more grievously. For hyle indeed did not wish to uproot the alien kingdom, but to hold it;

and though it destroyed certain of its own by consuming them through certain others of its own, yet it changed them anew into other forms, so that by dying and being reborn they might at least, through intervals of time, enjoy the gladness of their own life; but God, such as you describe as omnipotent and best, both uproots aliens and damns his own forever; and—what is believed with a more marvelous madness—hyle harms its own animals in its own fight, God punishes his own members in his own victory. What is this, vain men? Recall, to be sure, the words of Faustus about God as though about an antidote, and hyle as though about a poison; behold, your antidote harms more than the poison. Would hyle shut up even a god forever in so horrible a lump, or fix its own bowels there?

And—what is more wicked—he slanders those same remnants, lest he seem to have failed in that he could not purge them. For Manichaeus says in the Epistle of the Foundation that those souls become worthy of such punishment for this reason, that they suffered themselves to wander from their former luminous nature and became enemies to the holy light—although he himself sent them into that error, whereby they were so darkened that light became an enemy to light: if unwilling, he is unjust, in that he compelled them; if willing, he is ungrateful, in that he damns them. If they could foreknow that they would become enemies to their own origin, then both before the war they were tormented with fear, and in the war they were inexpiably defiled, and after the war they were damned forever, never blessed; but if they could not foreknow,

then both before the war they were improvident, and in the war they were powerless, and after the war they were wretched, never divine. And assuredly what these are, that God is, according to the unity of substance. Do we think, do you regard, how monstrously you blaspheme? And yet sometimes, wishing as it were to defend the goodness of God, you yourselves say that even to hyle something of good is granted, so that, shut up in itself, it may not rage. It will therefore have something of good, when nothing of good is mixed into it? 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 commingling? Say, then, two evils, but the one worse than the other;

or two goods, not supreme, but the one better than the other—yet so, indeed, that what is better you should call the more wretched; for if this will be the outcome of that so great war, that when hyle is separated off from its own devastation, and the members of God are fixed in the lump, something of good is granted to the enemies and so much of evil is inflicted on the citizens—consider who has conquered. But indeed, forsooth, hyle is the poison, which was able to form, strengthen, nourish, and invigorate its own animals; and God the antidote, who was able to damn, because he could not heal, his own members. Insane men! Neither is that hyle, nor is he God. So do those rave who, not enduring sound doctrine, turn to fables. BOOK TWENTY-TWO. FAUSTUS said: Why do you blaspheme the law and the prophets?

Indeed we are by no means foes or enemies of the law and the prophets, nor of anyone at all—so much so that, if only it be permitted us through them, we are ready to confess that all those things are false which are written about them and on account of which they seem hateful to us. But you resist, and by assenting to your writers you perhaps bring innocent prophets into blame, defame the patriarchs, dishonor even the law; and—what is more foolish—you wish both that your writers are not liars, and that yet those men are religious and holy, whose disgraceful deeds and shameful lives these writers have recorded. Since these two cannot equally stand together, it must be either that these men were evil, or that those writers were lying and false.

Come now, if you please, by common assent let us condemn the writers and take up the defense of the law and the prophets. But by the law I now mean not circumcision nor sabbaths and sacrifices and the other things of this sort of the Jews, but that which is truly law, that is: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not swear falsely, and the rest. Since to this, long ago spread abroad among the nations—that is, from the time when the creature of this world subsists—the Hebrew writers, rushing in as it were with leprosy and scab, mingled these abominable and most base precepts of their own, which look to circumcision and sacrifices—come now, if you too are certainly a friend of the law, condemn with me those who dared to violate it by this commingling of things unsuited to the same precepts:

which precepts—unless you too knew they were not law—you would not, professing righteousness, strive to keep even a part of the law, or else would confess yourselves openly to be not righteous. But now you have anxious care to live rightly with regard to those commandments which forbid crimes, and of those things which pertain to the Jews no mention is made; and how far this will be excused to you, unless it be established that these same are not law? Finally, if—just as you would judge it an intolerable insult, kindling into flame, should anyone call you negligent of this precept whereby it is said, Thou shalt not kill, or Thou shalt not commit adultery—so likewise you would blaze up, should anyone call you both uncircumcised and negligent of the sabbath,

then it would be understood beyond doubt that both were law and a commandment of God. But now you seek praise and glory concerning those higher precepts, if you keep them, and concerning these you fear no loss of the same good, because you despise them. Wherefore it is established that these, as I have said, are not law, but rather the blemishes and scab of the law: which, if they are condemned by us, are condemned as false, not as legitimate. Nor does this reproach touch the law, nor God the author of the law, but those who inscribed both Him and it with their nefarious religious observances. But that we sometimes assail the venerable name of the law, when we prosecute 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 own proper dignity. Cut away from it the Israelitish basenesses as if they were warts, impute the crime of its deformation to the writers, and you will at once see that we have been enemies of Judaism, not of the law. It is the name that deceives you, because you know not to whom it ought by right to be ascribed. Besides these things, why you should think that we blaspheme your prophets and patriarchs, I do not see. For if these things had been written or dictated by us, which the same men are read to have committed, this your accusation against us would not be unreasonable; but where these things are written either by the men themselves, contrary to the custom of honor, snatching glory from vices, or by their associates and peers, what fault of ours is there in this?

For we condemn, in detestation, the iniquitous acts which the guilty, of their own accord and unasked, confessed concerning themselves; or if this malignity feigned these things against them through the envy of the writers, let the writers be punished, let their books be condemned, let the prophetic name be cleared of unworthy report, let the authority of the patriarchs be restored to its own gravity and censure. And indeed it might well have come to pass that, just as they impudently feigned so many things concerning God—now saying that He dwelt from eternity in darkness and afterward marveled when He saw the light, now that He was ignorant of the future, so that He gave that command which Adam was not going to keep.

...that He should command him; now also as improvident, since He could not see him hiding in a corner of paradise after his nakedness was known; now also as envious and fearful, lest, if His man should taste of the tree of life, he should live forever; now again as greedy for blood and fat from every kind of sacrifice, and jealous if the same offerings were made to others as to Himself; and now as angry against strangers, now against His own people; now slaying thousands of men for trivial faults or none at all; now even threatening that He would come with a sword and would spare no one, neither the righteous nor the sinner. It could well happen, I say, that they should lie about the men of God, who have lied about God Himself with such insolence.

But agree with us in this, that the writers should bear the blame, if you wish thereby to acquit the prophets. Otherwise, we did not write these things about Abraham either: that, burning with a mad desire to have offspring, and giving little credit to God, who had already promised him this from Sarah his wife, he lay with a concubine—and, to make it the more shameful, with his wife's knowledge; nor that this most infamous huckster of his own marriage, for the sake of avarice and his belly, at different times sold his wife Sarah into the embrace of two kings, Abimelech and Pharaoh, falsely calling her his sister because she was very beautiful;

nor that Lot, his own brother, having been delivered from Sodom, lay with his two daughters upon the mountain—who would more honourably have burned in Sodom by the stroke of lightning than have flamed on the mountain with the fire of forbidden lust; nor that Isaac did the same thing to his father, and dealt likewise concerning Rebecca his wife, himself too pretending that she was his sister, that through her he might live basely; nor that Jacob his son, husband of four wives, roamed like a he-goat between Rachel and Leah, two full sisters, and their two several handmaids, so that daily there was a contest among the four harlots as to which should first seize him for intercourse when he came from the field, and at times they even hired him from one another for the night by wages;

likewise that his son Judah slept with Tamar his daughter-in-law after the marriages of one and then another of his sons, being deceived, as they say, by her disguise of a prostitute, into which the same woman had transformed herself, she who well knew that her father-in-law had always had dealings with women of this kind; nor that David, after so great a number of wives, committed adultery also with the poor wife of Uriah his soldier, and destroyed the man himself in war; nor that Solomon his son had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines and kings' daughters without number;

nor that Hosea, first of the prophets, begot children of a harlot woman—to which shameful act, to make it the worse, the counsel of God is also ascribed—nor yet that Moses committed homicide, that he despoiled Egypt, that he waged wars, that he both commanded and did many cruel things, that not even he was content with a single marriage. These things, I say, and things like them, which are found in their various books, were neither written nor dictated by us; but either these tales of your writers are false, or the crimes of your fathers are true. Choose which you will; for we are compelled to detest either the one or the other alike, since we hate men so wicked and base as much as we hate liars. AUGUSTINE replied:

You understand neither the sacraments of the law nor the deeds of the prophets, because you know not how to consider either holiness or righteousness. But concerning 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 therein which was to be fulfilled by being carried out, given through the grace of the New Testament, and another which, by being removed, was to be shown fulfilled through the truth made manifest: so that the precept of the law was received as to be perfected by the love of God and neighbour, while the promise of the law was shown discharged by the cessation of circumcision and of the other sacraments of that time.

For the precept made men guilty, that they might long for salvation, while the promise celebrated figures, that they might await the Saviour; so that through the coming of the New Testament grace bestowed might set free the former, and truth restored might take away the latter. For the very law that was given through Moses became grace and truth through Jesus Christ: grace, namely, so that, the indulgence of sins being given, what had been commanded might be kept by the gift of God; and truth, so that, the observance of the shadows being taken away, what had been promised might be made present through the faith of God.

Accordingly these men, who reproach the things they do not understand and call the promissory figures of the sacraments the 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 censure the movements of the mouth as superfluous and unseemly; or as if some blind man, wishing to test by touch some house praised to him, whether it were as reported, and feeling with his hand the smoothness of the walls, should stumble into the windows and reprove them as inconsistent with that evenness, and think the openings to be ruinous crevices.

Now indeed that the deeds of the prophets were themselves also prophetic and mystical—what am I to do, that they may understand, whose minds vanity has seized, so that they suppose we believe even God Himself to have at some time dwelt in darkness, because it is written, 'darkness was upon the deep,' 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 which is God Himself, and the light which God made, they therefore think it follows that He was Himself in darkness before He made light, when there was darkness upon the deep, before He said, 'Let there be light, and there was light.' For as in the New Testament both are said of Him—for it says both: