Latin original · 39 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 15:1348–15:1386 (1391 verses in all)
'The world cannot receive him,' this was said precisely of those who are wont in the Scriptures to be called by the name of 'world'—the lovers of the world, or the ungodly, or the carnal—of whom the Apostle says: 'The natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God.' For they are said to be of this world so long as they cannot relish anything more than these bodily things which they have perceived in this world; just as you too relish nothing else, you who, when you marvelled at this light of the sun and moon, fashioned all such things into divinities for yourselves under that empty-talking author whom, deceived and deceivers, you call the Paraclete.
Accordingly, being in no way able to show how that one is the Paraclete, you have no ground on which to teach that you have discovered, by some most firm authority, that these Gospel writings—from which you refuse to accept everything—are not the work of Christ's apostles. It remains, therefore, that you say you have discovered this on the ground that there are in them things which tarnish the glory of Christ: namely, that he is there recounted as born of a virgin, that he was circumcised, that a sacrifice was offered for him such as was then offered, that he was baptized, that he was tempted by the devil.
But apart from these things, and apart from the testimonies out of the Old Testament—which to those men are uncertain writings—you confess, according to what Faustus says, that you accept the rest, and especially the mystical fastening of his cross, by which the wounds of the passion of your souls are set forth. 'Then,' he says, 'his saving precepts and his parables and his whole deifying discourse, which above all bears the distinction of two natures, there is no doubt is his own.'
You see, then, that what you are aiming at is this: that all authority of the Scriptures be taken away from the midst, and that each man's own mind be its own author, deciding what in each Scripture it approves and what it disapproves—that is, that he be not made subject to the authority of the Scriptures for his faith, but himself subject the Scriptures to himself; so that a thing should please him not because it is read written in lofty authority, but should seem rightly written for this reason, that it has pleased him. To what do you commit yourself, O wretched soul, feeble, wrapped in carnal mists? To what do you commit yourself? Remove authority, then—let us see!—remove authority, render a reason.
Is your reason carried so far that, unless the nature of God is believed to be violable and corruptible, that long fable of yours cannot find a theatrical exit? Finally, whence do you know that there are eight earths and ten heavens, that Atlas bears the world and, holding it in splendour, suspends it, and countless things of that sort? Whence do you know these things? 'Plainly,' you say, 'Manichaeus taught me.' But, unhappy one, you believed—for you did not see it.
If, then, for the sake of a thousand fabulous phantasms, with which you are shamefully heavy-laden, you have subjected yourself to a most obscure and most frenzied authority, so as to believe all these things merely because they are written in those books to which you have judged, by a pitiable error, that belief must be given, though nothing is demonstrated to you—why do you not rather subject yourself to the Gospel authority, so well founded, so firmly established, spread abroad with such great glory, and handed down by most certain successions from the times of the apostles even to our own times, that you may believe, may live, may learn also that all those things which offend you offend you only out of a vain and perverse opinion; and that it is rather true that the immutable nature of God took upon itself something of mortal creature, in which, remaining unchangeably, it did and suffered, not deceitfully but truly, whatever it befitted that same creature to do and to suffer for the salvation of the human race from which it had been taken—than to believe the nature of God violable and corruptible, and, once defiled and oppressed, unable to be wholly set free and purged, but by the supreme necessity of God condemned to the eternal punishment of the 'globe'?
'But,' you say, 'I believed the things he did not show me, for this reason: that he plainly showed me two natures, namely of good and of evil, in this very world.' But this very thing, unhappy one, is where you have been deceived—that, just as in that Gospel Scripture, so in this world you could think nothing evil except that by which your carnal sense was offended, such as a serpent, fire, poison, and the like; nor anything good except that which soothed this same carnal sense of yours with some pleasantness, such as the delight of flavours and the sweetness of odours and the sight of this light, and whatever else happened likewise to flatter either your ears or your eyes or your nostrils or your palate.
But if you first looked upon the whole creation in such a way as to attribute it to God its author—as though reading a certain great book of the nature of things—and thus, if anything there offended you, more safely believed that the cause could lie hidden from you as a mere man, rather than daring to find fault with anything in the works of God, you would never have fallen into these sacrilegious trifles and blasphemous fictions. By these, not understanding whence evil comes, you try to fill God with all evils. Here, now, if you should ask us whence we know that these writings are the apostles', we briefly answer you that we know it from the same source whence you too know that those writings are Manichaeus's, which you so pitiably prefer to this authority.
For if on this very point someone should raise a question against you and dash in the doubt of contradiction, saying that the books which you produce are not Manichaeus's, what will you do? Will you not rather laugh at the ravings of such a man, who against a matter confirmed by so great a chain of connection and succession should hurl forth the impudence of such a claim? Just as, therefore, it is certain that those books are Manichaeus's, and one who, coming crosswise, born so long afterward, should stir up against you the litigation of this contradiction is utterly to be laughed at:
so it is certain that Manichaeus, or the Manichaeans, are to be laughed at, or even lamented, who dare to say any such thing against an authority so well founded, guarded and carried down by certain successions from the times of the apostles even to these times. Now, therefore, the authority of Manichaeus is to be compared with the authority of the apostles. For that these writings are theirs is as certain as that those are his. But who compares Manichaeus with the apostles, except whoever separates himself from Christ, who sent the apostles? Or who ever discerned two natures, mutually opposed and springing from their own proper principles, in the words of Christ, except one who does not discern the words of Christ?
The apostles, therefore, as disciples of the truth, proclaim the true nativity of Christ and his true passion; but Manichaeus boasts that he leads into all truth, and wishes to lead into a Christ of such a kind, in whom he proclaims the falsity of his very passion. The former proclaim Christ circumcised in the flesh which he took from the seed of Abraham; the latter, God cut apart in his very nature by the race of darkness. The former proclaim that a sacrifice, imitating the one then piously offered, was offered for the flesh of Christ; the latter, that a member not of flesh but of the very divine substance was brought forth to be immolated to all the demons of the opposing race of nature.
The former proclaim Christ baptized in the Jordan for the sake of providing an example; the latter, God himself submerged by himself in the contamination of darkness, not wholly to emerge, but that whatever in him could not be cleansed was to be punished with eternal damnation. The former proclaim the flesh of Christ tempted by the leader of demons; the latter, a portion of God possessed by the race of demons. And the former indeed proclaim that flesh tempted, that it might teach us to resist the tempter; the latter, that portion possessed, so that it can neither be restored to the Father nor to the Conqueror. In short, Manichaeus announces something else, drawn from the doctrine of demons, as though it were more exalted; but the apostles commend to him the doctrine of Christ, so that whoever announces anything else, let him be anathema. BOOK THIRTY-THREE. FAUSTUS said: It is written in the Gospel:
'Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.' Why, then, do you not accept the patriarchs? Far be it that we should envy any mortal whom God, looking upon him perhaps in his mercy, has at any time brought back from perdition to salvation; but we surely set this down as belonging to his clemency, who had mercy, not to the merit of that man, whose reprehensible life you cannot deny to have been such:
and through this, even the fathers of the Jews—namely Abraham and Isaac and Jacob—if this testimony concerning them from Christ, which you adduce, is certain (although they themselves were indeed most disgraceful, as almost their descendant Moses indicates, or whoever else is the author of that history which is called Genesis, who wrote their lives as most worthy in our eyes of all hatred and loathing)—let them nonetheless be themselves also now in the kingdom of heaven, be in a place which they had never believed in nor hoped for, as almost plainly appears from their own books—provided, however, it is agreed among you, even when you confess it, that after a long interval they were freed by our Lord Christ from the foul and penal custody of the lower regions, where the deserts of their life were confining them, and so were able—by his mystical passion, if they have arrived—to come to this very thing which is written concerning them.
For not because our same Lord freed a certain robber from the cross, and said that he would be with him that very same day in the paradise of his Father, would anyone envy it, or be so inhuman as to be displeased by this office of such great kindness. Yet nevertheless we shall not on that account say that the lives and morals of robbers ought to be approvable to us, because Jesus granted indulgence to a robber; or because he pardoned the errors of publicans and harlots, and said that these very ones would even go before into the kingdom of heaven those who had borne themselves proudly. For indeed a certain woman caught in injustice and adultery, when the Jews accused her, he himself absolved, charging her that she should now cease to sin.
Wherefore, if he did some such thing also concerning Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, thanks be to himself; he who makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust, teaches him to work such things concerning souls. But this one thing in this opinion of yours is troublesome to me: why you think this only of the fathers of the Jews, and not also of the other patriarchs of the nations, that they too felt at some time this grace of our Deliverer—especially since the Christian Church consists rather of their sons than of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But you say, of course, that the former worshipped idols, whereas these worshipped Almighty God, and that for this reason Jesus had care of them alone.
So then does the worship of Almighty God thrust one down into Tartarus and need the aid of the Son—one who worshipped the Father? But look to it yourself. Let us agree, I say, thus far, that they were brought back into heaven, not because they deserved it, but because divine clemency overcomes the force of sins. Nevertheless, whether this too was said by Christ, the very variety of the writers makes even us doubtful and uncertain. For whereas two evangelists, Matthew and Luke, alike narrate about a certain centurion whose servant was then sick, and on whose account Jesus is seen to have said this very thing—namely, that he had not found so great a faith in Israel as in that gentile, though pagan man, because the same man had said that he was not worthy that Jesus should enter under his roof:
but only asked this, that he would command by a word, and his servant would be healed—yet Matthew alone adds this, that Jesus went on to say: 'Amen, I say to you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom they shall send into the outer darkness'—many indeed who were to come, signifying pagans, on account of the centurion, since he too was a gentile, yet in whom so great a faith had been found; but calling 'sons of the kingdom' the Jews, in whom no faith had been found. But Luke, although he too thought this worth inserting into his own Gospel as necessary and memorable among the wonderful deeds of Christ, nonetheless there, concerning Abraham,
of Isaac and Jacob makes no mention at all. But if anyone should say that he omitted it for this reason, namely because that saying had already been sufficiently given by Matthew, why then does he commemorate the very deed done concerning the centurion and his servant, which would equally by far have been sufficiently intimated to us already by Matthew's diligence? But this is false.
For even concerning the very entreaty of coming, Matthew indeed says that the centurion himself in person came to him to ask for a cure; but Luke says not so, but that he sent to him the elders of the Jews—who, lest perhaps he should be despised by him as a gentile (since these men will have it that he was plainly a Jew), set about persuading him, saying that he was worthy that he should grant this to him, since indeed he loved his nation and had himself built the synagogue. As though this too pertained to the Son of God, if the Jews should have deserved the building of their synagogue from a pagan centurion! Yet Luke did not by any means keep silent about this word entirely—thinking, I suppose, lest perhaps it should have been true; but he nonetheless shifts its place, to...
and joins it to a certain other, far dissimilar occasion—that is, where Jesus says to his disciples: 'Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many shall seek to enter and shall not be able. But when the master of the house has entered and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock, saying: Lord, open to us. And answering he will say: I do not know you. Then you will begin to say: We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets and synagogues. And he will say to you: I do not know whence you are; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets entering into the kingdom of God, but yourselves cast out.'
'And they shall come from the east and the west and the south and the north, and shall recline in the kingdom of God.' Now this very thing indeed—that many shall be excluded from the kingdom of God, namely those who have borne only the name of Christ but have not done his works—Matthew too did not omit to write; but there, concerning Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, he makes no mention at all. Likewise concerning the centurion and his servant, Luke indeed also wrote; but he equally testifies nothing at all there about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob—so that, since it cannot be established for certain where it was said, nothing prevents one from even not believing that it was said. And not without reason do we never indeed bring our ears to writings of this kind, so discordant and various, without judgment and reason;
but, contemplating all things and comparing some with others, we weigh whether each of them could have been said by Christ or not. For many words have been inserted by your predecessors into the discourses of our Lord which, though marked with his name, do not agree with his faith—especially since, as has already often been proved by us, these were written neither by himself nor by his apostles, but long after their assumption were compiled by I know not whom, themselves not even in agreement with one another, semi-Jews, out of rumours and opinions; who nonetheless, transferring all these same things to the names of the Lord's apostles or of those who seemed to have followed the apostles, lied that they wrote their own errors and falsehoods according to them. But look to it yourself;
about this matter, meanwhile, as I say, I would not contend too greatly with you, since that is protection enough for me which I set forth before, and which even you yourselves are not permitted to deny—that before the coming of our Lord all the patriarchs of Israel and the prophets lay in the darkness of hell according to their merits: whence, if they were ever freed by Christ and brought back to the light, what does this have to do with hatred of their life? For we hate and reject not what they were, that is, men, but what kind of men they were, that is, evil; nor what they now are, that is, purged, but what they were, that is, at one time impure.
And through this, meanwhile—however you wish it to stand—this chapter is no obstacle to us; since, whether it is true, here Christ's mercy and goodness are commended; or whether it is false, the crime clings to its writers. In either way we are safe, as always. AUGUSTINE replied: How safe, wretched man? How safe, you who say that you hate the patriarchs as impure and still bewail your god as impure? Certainly you have granted to those patriarchs, after the coming of the Saviour, a purgation bestowed and a blessed rest given; but your god, even after the coming of the Saviour, still lies in darkness, is still plunged in all defilements, still wallows in all impurities.
Thus not only was the life of those men better than your god, but even their very death was more fortunate. But in what abodes those righteous men were who had departed from this life before Christ came in the flesh, and whether the passion of Christ transferred even them to something better—those who had not only believed in him as one to come, to suffer, to rise again, but had even, as was fitting, foretold this very thing by the prophetic Spirit—this is to be investigated in the holy Scriptures, if in any way it can be investigated to clarity, and not out of this are the rash notions of any men whatsoever to be pursued, much less the perversities of so execrable a heresy, wandering too far from the truth.
In vain indeed does Faustus, by this obliquity, promise himself that anything can be bestowed on anyone after this life which he has not procured to be bestowed on himself in this life. It is good for you that, while you live here, you should abandon that error and come to know and hold the truth of the Catholic faith. Otherwise, far off will be what the unjust man promises himself, when there shall begin to come to pass what God has threatened to the unjust man. Now concerning the life of the patriarchs I have already, as much as I judged sufficient, replied not a little to this evil-speaking man:
to whom—not corrected at death nor justified after their passion—the Lord bore testimony, when he admonished the Jews that, if they were the sons of Abraham, they should do the works of Abraham; and that the same Abraham had longed to see his day, and had rejoiced when he had seen it; and that into his bosom—that is, into some great and hidden secret of I know not what quiet happiness—the angels carried that poor, afflicted man, despised by the proud rich man. What shall I say of the apostle Paul? Or does he perhaps also praise Abraham as justified after death, because, before he was circumcised, he believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness?
This he esteems so highly that he says we, who are not propagated from his flesh, are made his sons for no other reason than that we follow the footsteps of his faith. But what shall I do with you, whom iniquity has so deafened against the testimonies of the Scriptures, that whatever is brought forward from them against you, you dare to say was not said by the Apostle, but written under his name by I know not what forger? So openly alien from Christian teaching is the doctrine of demons which you preach, that you can in no part defend it under the name of Christian teaching, unless you say that the Scriptures of the apostles are false. O unhappy enemies of your own soul!
What writings will ever have any weight of authority, if the Gospel and apostolic writings shall not have it? Concerning what book will it be certain whose it is, if the writings which the Church—propagated from the apostles themselves and made illustrious with such eminence through all nations—calls and holds to be the apostles', are of uncertain authorship? And will this be certain, that the apostles wrote what the heretics opposed to this Church bring forward, named with the names of their own authors who existed long after the apostles? As though indeed even in secular writings there were not most certain authors, under whose names many things were afterward brought forth and therefore repudiated, either because they agreed but little with those which were established to be theirs, or because at the time
at which they wrote, they by no means became known, nor were they deemed worthy to be handed down and commended to posterity through the authors themselves or their closest associates. Is it not the case—to pass over others—that under the name of Hippocrates, that most noble physician, certain books have been brought forth which were not received into authority by the physicians? Nor did some similarity of matter and words help them, when, compared with those which were established truly to be Hippocrates', they were judged unequal, and because from that time at which his other writings did not become known, they were judged truly to be his. But these books, compared with which those brought forth crosswise are rejected—whence is it established that they are Hippocrates'?
Whence, if anyone should deny this, he is not even refuted, but laughed at—except that the series of succession has so commended them from the very time of Hippocrates down to this time and beyond, that to doubt of this is the mark of a madman. Whence did men come to know the books of Plato, Aristotle, Varro, Cicero, and other authors of that kind, that they are theirs, except by the same continuous attestation of times succeeding one another? Many men have written many things about ecclesiastical letters, not indeed with canonical authority, but out of some zeal of assisting or of learning. Whence is it established whose each work is, except because in those times in which each man wrote them,
he communicated and published them to those he could, and thence, the knowledge being continued and more widely confirmed to others and yet others, they came down even to posterity, even down to our own times—so that, being asked whose each book is, we do not hesitate as to what we ought to answer? But why do I go on into things long past? Behold these very writings which we have in our hands: if, after some time of this our life, someone should deny that either those are Faustus's or these are mine, whence is he refuted, except because those who now know these things transmit their knowledge, by the continued successions of posterity, even to those who shall come long after?
Since these things are so, who at last is blinded by so great a madness—unless he has been subverted by consenting to the malice and deceit of lying demons—as to say that the Church of the apostles could not have deserved to transmit their writings faithfully to posterity through such a faithful and numerous concord of brethren, while it preserved their very chairs by a most certain succession down to the present bishops—when this comes about with such great ease in the case of the writings of men of whatever sort, whether outside the Church or within the Church itself? 'But,' he says, 'their writings are found contradictory to one another.' You read maliciously, with an evil zeal. You do not understand, foolish; you do not see, blind.
For what great thing was it to inspect these things diligently and to find a great and wholesome agreement of those same writings, if contentiousness did not pervert you and if piety helped you? For who has ever, reading two historians writing about one thing, judged that either or either of them was either deceiving or deceived, if one of them said what the other omitted; or if one embraced the same matter more briefly, keeping only the sense safe and whole, while the other set out everything as it were member by member, so as to intimate not only what was done, but also in what manner it was done? Just as Faustus wished from this to cavil at the truth of the Gospels, because Matthew said something which Luke, when he was narrating the same, ...
omitted to say it—as though Luke had denied that Christ said what Matthew wrote he had said. From this, there has never at all been any question, nor can this be objected except by those who are altogether imprudent and unwilling or unable to consider any of these matters. That indeed is wont both to be inquired among the faithful and to be objected by the unbelievers—but even to these, whether the too little learned or the too contentious, unless being admonished they come to their senses—namely, that Matthew said: 'A centurion came to him, entreating him and saying'; but Luke, that he sent to him the elders of the Jews, asking this very thing concerning his servant who was ill, that he would heal him.
And when he drew near to the house, he sent others, through whom he might say that he was not worthy that Jesus should enter into his house, nor himself worthy to come to Jesus. How then, according to Matthew, did he 'come to him, entreating and saying: My servant lies in the house paralytic, and is grievously tormented'? This, then, is understood: that Matthew, having briefly embraced the true and whole sense itself, said that the centurion came to Jesus, and did not say whether he came through himself or through others; and that he said that to him concerning his servant, not expressing whether he said it through himself or through others. For what of it?
Is not human usage full of such ways of speaking, when we say that someone has come close to something, even one whom we do not yet say has arrived? Do we not also most commonly speak of the very arrival itself—to which it seems there is as it were nothing that could now be added—as being brought about even through others, often saying: 'He pleaded his cause, he reached the judge,' or 'He reached such a powerful man or such a powerful thing,' when for the most part he does this through friends, without at all having seen the one to whom each is said to have come? Whence also such men, whoever attain by the art of ambition, whether through themselves or through others, to the in a certain manner inaccessible minds of the powerful, are now even commonly called 'reachers' (perventores). What then?
When we read, do we forget how we are accustomed to speak? Was the Scripture of God going to address us otherwise than after our own manner of speaking? This much, indeed, I would answer, from the common usage of speech, to the stubborn and turbulent. But those who seek into these matters not contentiously but calmly and faithfully, let them draw near to Christ not in the flesh but in the heart, not by bodily presence but by the power of faith, as that centurion did; then they will better perceive what Matthew meant. For to such as these it is said in the Psalm: 'Draw near to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed.' Whence that centurion had drawn nearer to Christ, whose faith he so praised, than the very men through whom he sent his words. Like unto this matter is also that which the Lord says: