Latin original · 38 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 15:875–15:912 (1391 verses in all)
'God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all' we read there, and also: 'God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts' we likewise read there—so also in those old books both are found: for it is said of the Wisdom of God, 'She is the brightness of the eternal light,' which Wisdom assuredly was not made, since through her all things were made; and of a certain light which cannot come to be except through her, it is said thus: 'Thou wilt light my lamp, O Lord; my God, thou wilt enlighten my darkness.' Just as also in the beginning, when there was darkness upon the deep, God said, 'Let there be light, and there was light'; which He would not have made, save by the light-making Light, which is God.
For just as He suffices for Himself unto eternal blessedness, and out of this abounds to make others blessed, so He suffices for Himself unto eternal light, and out of this abounds to make others enlightened; desiring the good of none, since every good will enjoys Him; fearing the evil of none, since by Him every evil will is forsaken, because neither does he increase Him who by His gift is blessed, nor does he terrify Him who by His judgment is wretched. Such a God, O Manichaeans, you do not worship; far from Him you have made yourselves, while you follow after your phantasms, which your empty and wandering heart, drinking in this light of the heavenly bodies through the eyes of the flesh, has enlarged and varied for you with manifold fabrication.
This light, although God also made it, is far beyond comparison even with that light which God made in the minds of the godly, whom He enlightens out of darkness, just as He justifies them out of impiety—how much more beyond comparison with 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.' But 'God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all'; the impious, however, shall not see the light, as Isaiah says. To such, therefore, that light-making Light is inaccessible, which made not only that spiritual light in the minds of the saints, but also this bodily light—not that from which He forbids the wicked to approach, but that which He makes to rise upon the good and the evil.
When, therefore, there was darkness upon the deep, He who was Light said, 'Let there be light.' That the Light made a light is manifest, for it is plainly set down: 'God said.' Yet what light He made is not so manifest: whether that which is in the minds of the angels—that is, whether God then made those rational spirits themselves—or some bodily light, itself also removed from our sight in the lofty places of this world; this is disputed with concord among the students of the divine Scriptures. For on the fourth day He made these conspicuous luminaries of heaven; and again, whether they were made together with their own light, or whether from that which had already been made a certain light was in some way kindled, is likewise inquired.
Whatever light indeed was made, when, there being darkness upon the deep, God said, 'Let there be light,' yet that the created light was made by the creating Light, no one doubts who, by reading the holy Scriptures piously, becomes worthy to understand. Nor is God on that account to be thought to have dwelt in darkness before He made light, because 'the Spirit of God was borne over the waters,' when it had been foretold: 'darkness was upon the deep.' For the deep is the immeasurable depth of the waters. Hence it may occur to carnal prudence that the Spirit of God dwelt as it were in this darkness which was upon the deep, of which it is said:
'was borne over the waters,' since he does not understand how light shines in darkness and the darkness comprehends it not, unless through the word of God light be made, and it be said to them: 'For ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.' But if rational minds, made dark through an impious will, cannot comprehend the wisdom of God, which is 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 also over the darkness of the waters, by an incomparable remoteness indeed, yet of substance, not of place? 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 shall have opened—He from whom come the true things that we say. But what kind of judges of the divine Scriptures do we endure in these men, to whom it is even displeasing that God was pleased with His own works, whom they reproach as having wondered at the light as though it were unwonted, because it is written: 'And God saw the light, that it was good'! For He approves His own works, because the things He made please Him, and this is 'to see that they are good.' For He is not compelled to make anything unwillingly, so as to make what does not please Him, nor does He slip unforeseeingly into making anything, so that what is made should displease Him.
But why should it not displease these men, that our God saw His work, that it was good—seeing that their god, when he plunged his own members into darkness, set up a veil against himself? For he did not see what he made, that it was good; but he was unwilling to see, because it is evil. Faustus indeed said that our God 'wondered'—which is not written, nor does it at all follow that, when someone has seen that a thing is good, he is also said to have wondered. For seeing many good things we do not wonder, as though they were so beyond expectation, but only approve that they ought to have been so. Nevertheless, we have shown them that God wondered—not in the Old Testament, at which they maliciously carp, but in the New, which they accept in order to deceive the ignorant.
For they confess Christ to be God, and set this in their snare as it were a most sweet bait, to catch those who are devoted to Christ. God therefore wondered, when Christ wondered; for so it is written in the Gospel, that on hearing the faith of a certain centurion He wondered and said to His disciples: 'Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith in Israel.' Behold, as we could, we have expounded 'God saw that it was good,' and better men perhaps expound these things better: let these men too expound why Jesus wondered at that which He foreknew before it came to pass, and which He assuredly knew before He heard it.
For although it makes a very great difference whether someone sees that a thing is good, or even wonders at it, yet in this there is some likeness, that Jesus too wondered at the light of faith which He Himself had made in the heart of that centurion—He who is the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into this world. And certainly some impious pagan could thus calumniate and reproach Him in the Gospel, just as Faustus does God in the Old Testament. For he too would call Christ improvident, not only because He wondered at the centurion's faith, but also because He chose Judas among His disciples, who was not going to keep His commandments—just as this man reproaches why a precept was given in paradise to a man who would not keep it.
He would also blame this, that He could not know who had touched Him, when the woman who suffered an issue of blood touched the hem of His garment—just as this man blamed God for not knowing where Adam was hiding, because, I suppose, He said: 'Adam, where art thou?' as Christ said: 'Who touched me?' He would also call Him envious and fearful, lest, if the five other virgins entered into His kingdom, they should live for ever: against whom He so shut the door that He would not open even to those who knocked piteously—as though forgetting what He Himself had promised, saying: 'Knock, and it shall be opened unto you'—just as this man accuses God of envy and fear, in that He did not admit the sinner to eternal life. He would also call Him greedy, not for the blood of cattle, but of men, because He said:
'He that loseth his own soul for my sake shall find it unto life eternal'—just as this man wished to calumniate concerning the sacrifices of animals, by which figures was promised the sacrifice of the blood whereby we have been redeemed. He would also reprove Him as jealous, because, when He had cast out the buyers and sellers from the temple by scourging them, the evangelist recalled that it was written of Him: 'The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up'—just as this man accused God of being jealous, because He forbade sacrifice to be offered to others. He would call Him angry against His own and against strangers: against His own, indeed, because He said: 'The servant who knows the will of his lord and does things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with many stripes'; against strangers, because He said: 'If any receive you not, shake off the dust from your feet against them;
verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for that city.' Just as this man charges God with being angry, now against strangers, now against His own, both of whom the apostle recalls, saying: 'For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law.' He would also call Him one who slaughters and pours out the blood of many for trivial faults or none at all. For it would seem to a pagan a trivial fault or none, either not to have a wedding garment at the marriage 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—or to be unwilling that Christ should reign over one; on account of which sin He says:
'But those mine enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before me'—just as this man accused God in the Old Testament, who seemed to him to slaughter thousands of men for trivial faults or none at all. Now indeed as to that which Faustus reproaches—God threatening that He would come with a sword, wherewith He would spare neither the righteous nor the sinner—how would that pagan reprove it, hearing the apostle Paul say of our God: 'He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all,' hearing Peter too, when he was speaking of the great tribulations and slayings of the saints, exhorting to endurance and saying: 'The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God;
and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of the Lord? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear?'—how would he reprove it? For what is more righteous than that One whom nevertheless the Father spared not? And what is more evident than that He spares not even the righteous, amending them by the variety of tribulations, since of this it is openly said: 'And if the righteous scarcely be saved'? For not only in the Old Testament is it written: 'Whom God loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth,' and: 'If we have received good things at the hand of the Lord, why do we not endure the evil?'—but also in the New: 'As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten,' and that: 'For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged of the Lord;
but when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.' Yet nevertheless, if a pagan were to reproach in the New Testament such things as these men reproach in the Old, would not these very men undertake to defend them? But if they could do this, with what madness at last do they here reproach such things as they there defend? And if they could not, why do they concede that only in the one and not rather in both Testaments what seems perverse to the impious who do not understand ought to be believed by the pious who do not understand to be right, though hidden?
Or do they perhaps dare to say that even those things which we have adduced as similar from the New Testament are themselves false and perverse, by that diabolical privilege of theirs, whereby they hold and persuade that whatever is in the Gospel or the canonical epistles, by which they think their heresy may be aided, was said by Christ and the apostles; but whatever from those same books has sounded against them, they do not hesitate to say with impudent and sacrilegious mouth was inserted by falsifiers? To which frenzy of theirs, striving to extinguish and abolish the authority of all the books, I have already replied above not a little, so far as the plan of the work undertaken seemed to permit.
Now I give this warning, that since they strive to veil their insane and sacrilegious fables with the cloak of the Christian name, they should nevertheless see, when they dispute these things against the Christian Scriptures, that the truth of the divine books of both Testaments is defended by us not only against pagans, but also against Manichaeans. And these things indeed which Faustus has just set down in his discourse from our old writings as unworthy of God, I would perhaps thus defend against a pagan who reproached such things in the Gospel or apostolic discourse: that I would recall like things from their own authors, as our Paul did among the Athenians. For I would perhaps find even in their writings God the creator and fashioner of the world and the establisher of this light—
who nevertheless, before He founded it, was not lying in darkness; and who was lifted up with joy from His completed work—which is surely more than 'He saw that it was good'—and the giver of a law, which if a man should follow, he would do so to his own good, but if he should spurn it, to his own ill; whom they would not on that account call ignorant of the future, because He gave a law even to future despisers. And now indeed they would not even call a man improvident because 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 the other, but even that the other will answer this.
And if he wished to call God envious toward anyone, because He would not suffer the wicked to become blessed, he would find their books full concerning this matter as pertaining to divine providence. But concerning sacrifices, a pagan would object nothing else to me than why we reproach those things among them, when in our old books our God is read to have commanded such things to be offered to Himself. Here, discoursing perhaps more widely concerning the true sacrifice, I would show that it is due to none but the one true God—that which the one true Priest, the Mediator of God and men, offered to Him:
the promissory figures of which sacrifice it behoved to be celebrated in the victims of animals, for the sake of commending the future flesh and blood, through which one victim there should be made remission of sins contracted from flesh and blood, which shall not possess the kingdom of God, because the same substance of the body shall be changed into a heavenly quality: which the fire in the sacrifice signified, as it were swallowing up death into victory. And among that people these things were rightly celebrated, whose kingdom and priesthood were a prophecy of the King and Priest to come, to rule and consecrate the faithful among all nations, and to lead them into the kingdom of heaven and the sanctuary of the angels unto eternal life.
Of this true sacrifice, therefore, as the Hebrews celebrated the religious foreshadowings, so the pagans celebrated sacrilegious imitations, since 'the things which the Gentiles sacrifice,' says the apostle, 'they sacrifice to demons, and not to God.' For it is an ancient thing, this foretelling immolation of blood, testifying from the beginning of the human race the future passion of the Mediator; for Abel is found in the sacred writings to have been the first to offer this.
It is no wonder, therefore, if the prevaricating angels, whose two greatest vices are pride and deceit, flitting through this air, exacted for themselves from their own worshippers that which they knew to be due to the one true God—by whom they wished to be thought gods, the vanity of the human heart giving them place, especially when images were set up out of longing for the dead, whence the use of idols arose, and divine honours were paid with greater flattery, as to those received into heaven, in whose stead the demons set themselves up to be worshipped on earth, and demanded that sacrifice be offered to them by the deceived and lost. Sacrifice, therefore, not only when the true God justly commands it, but also when the false god proudly exacts it, sufficiently shows to whom it is due.
These things I would persuade that pagan, if he were more difficult to convince, even by prophecy itself, in which those things were written down so long before, which I would show to be now fulfilled. But if he despised this too, I would rather acknowledge this than wonder at it, since I would recall that not all were going to believe in the truth of that same prophecy. But if he should object to me Christ or God as jealous from either Testament, and should harp upon the very word, he would show nothing else than that he was either ignorant of or negligent of all letters.
For although their learned men distinguish between will and desire, joy and gladness, caution and dread, clemency and mercy, prudence and cunning, confidence and audacity, and many things in this manner—so that in these pairs of words they assign the former to the virtues, but the latter to the vices—yet their books are full, by the abuse of these names which properly signify vices, of cases where even virtues are so called, when either desire is put for will, or gladness for joy, or dread for caution, or mercy for clemency, or cunning for prudence, or audacity for confidence. And who could recount all the things which the custom of speech usurps to a like licence?
To this is added also the peculiar property of each several tongue. For in ecclesiastical writings I nowhere recall mercy set down in reproach; and with this the custom even of daily speech agrees. The Greeks call by one name two things which are indeed neighbouring, yet distinct—labour and pain; we express these by separate names: just as by us life is called by one name, whether that according to which we say 'it lives,' meaning it is not without soul, or that according to which we say 'he is a man of good life'; but the Greeks signify these two things also by two words.
Whence it may come about that, apart from the abuse of words which is widespread in all languages, by some property also of the Hebrew tongue zeal (jealousy) is put in both senses: whether when a mind troubled by a spouse's adultery pines away—which cannot befall God—or when a diligent guardianship is applied to preserving conjugal chastity—which God does, when He addresses His people as a spouse whom He does not wish to fornicate through many false gods; this it is useful for us to confess not only without doubt, but even with thanksgiving. This too I would say concerning the anger of God; for God is not disturbed when He inflicts anger, but 'anger' is put for vengeance, either by abuse or by some property of the aforesaid tongue.
But concerning the thousands of men slain, he would not wonder, 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 things to the lowest. But if he denied this too, he would either be more easily convinced by the authority of his own writers, or after somewhat longer disputation of certain reasonings; or, as too hard and stupid, he would be left to the divine judgment, in which he did not believe. Moreover, as for the trivial faults or none, on account of which God slew men, if he mentioned them expressly, we would show them to be neither none nor trivial.
As, for example, in what we set down concerning the wedding garment, we would demonstrate how great a wickedness it is to approach the sacred nuptials seeking there glory not of the bridegroom, but one's own—or if perchance something else were found to be signified by that garment in a better understanding; or, as to those who are slain before the eyes of the king because they would not have him reign over them, it would appear, perhaps not in a long discourse of ours, that although it is no fault of a man if he were unwilling that any man should reign over him, yet it is no small fault to be unwilling that He should reign over him, in whose kingdom alone one lives rightly, blessedly, and forever. Now that last thing which Faustus set down, plotting against the old books as though they disparaged God, namely that He threatens a sword.
wherewith He would spare no one, neither the righteous nor the sinner—if it were expounded to a pagan how it ought to be taken, he would perhaps resist neither the New nor the Old Testament, and there would please him the evangelical similitude which to these men, who wish to be held Christians, either does not appear, as to the blind, or displeases, as to the perverse. For that supreme Husbandman of the vine prepares His pruning-hook in one way for the fruitful branches, in another for the unfruitful; yet He spares neither the good nor the reprobate—the former to be cleansed, the latter to be cut off. For no man is 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 men do not number even Paul the apostle among the righteous.
who, although he humbly and truthfully confesses his past sins, yet gives thanks that he has been justified out of the faith of Jesus Christ. Or did that One spare him, whom the vain do not understand when He says: 'I will not spare, neither the righteous nor the sinner'? Let them hear him, then: 'And lest,' he says, 'I should be exalted by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me; for which thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me, and he said unto me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for strength is made perfect in weakness.' Behold, He did not spare even the righteous man, that He might perfect his strength in weakness—He who had given him the buffeting messenger of Satan—unless you say that the devil gave it him.
The devil, then, was acting so that Paul might not be exalted by the greatness of the revelations, and that Paul's virtue might be made perfect. Who would deny this? By Him, therefore, was the righteous man handed over to be buffeted by the angel of Satan, who through the devil also handed over the unrighteous to that same Satan; concerning whom the same Paul says: 'whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.' Do you now understand how He from on high spares neither the righteous nor the sinner? Or is it because a sword was named there that you shudder the more? For it is one thing to be buffeted, another to be slain. As though the thousands of martyrs had not been laid low by diverse kinds of death, or as though the persecutors had truly held this in their power, unless it had been granted them from on high by Him who said:
'I will spare neither the righteous nor the sinner,' when the Lord of the martyrs Himself, because He spared not His own Son, says most plainly to Pilate: 'Thou wouldest have no power over me, unless it were given thee from above.' These afflictions and persecutions of the righteous the same Paul calls an example of the righteous judgment of God. This sentence is more fully set forth 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 it first begin at us,' he says, 'what shall the end be of them that believe not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the sinner and the ungodly appear?'
For from this it is understood how the ungodly are not spared, being cut off like pruned branches for burning, when the righteous are not spared for the sake of accomplishing their purification. For Peter himself testifies that these things happen by the will of Him who says in the books of the Old Testament: 'I will spare neither the righteous nor the sinner.' For he himself also says: 'It is better, if the Spirit of God so will, to suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing.' When therefore by the will of the Spirit of God those who do well suffer, the righteous are not spared; but when those who do evil suffer, sinners are not spared; yet both come to pass according to the will of Him who says: 'I will spare neither the righteous nor the sinner,' scourging the one as a son, punishing the other as an ungodly man.
Behold, I have shown, as far as I could, that we do not worship a god who from eternity dwelt buried in darkness, but Him who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all, and who dwells in Himself in unapproachable light, of which eternal light the brightness is the coeternal Wisdom; nor an admirer of a light unlooked for, but the Creator of the light He made, that it might come to be, and its Approver, that it might endure; nor one ignorant of the future, but the Giver of a commandment and the Condemner of transgression, so that by a punishment justly brought against disobedience He might restrain those present and terrify those to come; nor one lacking foresight, seeking by not knowing, but judging by questioning; nor envious and fearful, but justly barring the transgressor from the eternal life which is given to the one who justly obeys;
nor one craving blood and fat, but promising the true sacrifice through certain figures to a carnal people, by imposing on them fitting sacrifices; nor jealous with an envious agitation, but with a tranquil goodness, lest the soul which owes chastity to the one God be defiled, corrupted and prostituted through many false gods; nor raging turbulently with a wrath as it were human, but severely rendering back other things that are divinely and justly due, which by a fixed usage of speech is called 'wrath,' not on account of any lust to take vengeance, but on account of the vigor of judging; nor destroying thousands of men for trivial offenses or for none at all, but by a most equitable scrutiny laying upon peoples, through the temporal deaths of mortals, the profit of fearing Him;
nor punishing the righteous and sinners without any distinction in blind confusion, but dispensing to the righteous a wholesome correction for the sake of their perfection, and to sinners a due severity for the sake of equity: whence it is manifest to you, O Manichaeans, that you have been deceived by your own suspicions, since by ill understanding our Scriptures, or by experience of evil interpreters, you believe falsehoods concerning Catholics, and thus, having forsaken sound doctrine, having turned to sacrilegious fables and become exceedingly perverse and estranged from the fellowship of the saints, you are unwilling to be corrected even from the New Testament, from which we bring forth such things as you find fault with in the Old. Hence it comes about that against you, as against pagans, we are compelled to defend both Testaments.
But suppose someone altogether carnally so foolish as to worship a god—not such a one as we worship, who is one and true, but such as you say we worship, one fashioned by your calumnies or suspicions—would not even such a man be worshipping a better god than yours? For I ask you, take heed and open whatever eyes you have; for no great sharpness of intellect is needed to perceive what I am about to say. I appeal to all, prudent and imprudent alike: hear, attend, judge. For how much better it would have been for your god to have dwelt from eternity in darkness than to have plunged into darkness the light coeternal with himself and akin to himself!