— you shudder at an evil deed through some good custom, or you take heed, by that very natural law, that you should not unjustly do to another what you do not wish to be done to you by another: yet your error, how it compels you to go in the contrary direction, both when you follow it and when you do not follow it, you feel — since either you do that which you do not wish to suffer, or you refrain from doing it precisely because you do not wish to suffer it. But that true bride of Christ, whom with a most shameless brow you insult over the stone diptych, understands what difference there is between the letter and the spirit — the two things which are called, in another manner, law and grace — and, now serving God not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit, she is no longer under the law, but under grace.
For she is not blinded by a litigious spirit, but meekly attends to the words of the apostle, that she may understand what he calls the law, under which he no longer wishes us to be, because it was set for the sake of transgression until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and because it entered in for this reason, that the offense might abound; but where the offense abounded, grace did much more abound. Nor yet for this reason does he call that same law sin, because without grace it does not give life; rather it increases the guilt by transgression added: for where there is no law, there is no transgression. And therefore by itself, when it is the letter alone without the spirit — that is, law without grace — it only makes men guilty; but he sets before himself what the less understanding might suppose, and opens up what he means, when he says:
'What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. But I had not known sin except through the law; for I had not known concupiscence, unless the law had said: You shall not covet. But sin, taking occasion, deceived me by the commandment, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was then that which is good made death to me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through that which is good.' She whom you insult understands these things, because she asks with groaning, because she seeks in humility, because she knocks in meekness; and thus she sees that the law is not censured when it is said, 'The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,' just as knowledge is not censured when it is said, 'Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.'
For assuredly he himself had said, 'We know that we all have knowledge,' and then adds, 'Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.' Why then did he himself have that whereby he might be puffed up, unless it be that with love not only does knowledge not puff up, but even strengthens? So the letter with the spirit, and the law with grace, is no longer called letter and law in that manner in which it is when, by itself, it kills while the offense abounds. For in this way the law is called even the strength of sin, when it increases sin's harmful delight through severe prohibition. Yet not even so is it evil; but sin, that it might appear sin, worked death through that which is good. So many things are harmful to some, although they are not evil.
For you too, when your eyes ache, even against your god the sun you close your windows. This bride of Christ, then, now dead to the law — that is, to sin, which is made more abundant by the prohibition of the law, when the law without grace commands but does not help — being thus dead to such a law, that she may be another's, of him who rose from the dead, discerns these things without injury to the law, lest she commit sacrilege against its author: which you do against him whom you do not understand to be the author of good, when you hear the apostle saying, 'Wherefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.' Behold, the author of good is he who seems to you to be one of the princes of darkness. Attend to the truth, it strikes your eyes. Behold, the apostle Paul says:
'The law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.' Behold him whose author it is who sent before that diptych, which you foolishly mock, in the dispensation of a great sacrament. For the same law which was given through Moses was made grace and truth through the law of Christ, when the spirit was added to the letter, that the righteousness of the law might begin to be fulfilled — which, unfulfilled, made men guilty even by transgression. For there is not one law that is holy and just and good, and another through which sin works death, to which we must die that we may be another's, of him who rose from the dead; but it is the very same. Behold, follow, read.
'But sin,' he says, 'that it might appear sin, worked death in me through that which is good, that sin, or the sinner, might become through the commandment exceedingly sinful.' Deaf one, blind one, hear, see. 'Through that which is good,' he says, 'it worked death in me.' Therefore the law is always good, whether grace be lacking to the empty or profit the full — always it is good, just as the sun is always good, because every creature of God is good, whether it harm aching eyes or soothe sound ones. Accordingly, what soundness is to the eyes for seeing the sun, that is grace to the mind for fulfilling the law.
And just as sound eyes do not die to the delight of the sun, but to those harsh strokes of the rays by which, dazzled, they were driven back into thicker darkness, so the soul which through the love of the spirit has been made whole is not said to be dead to the righteousness of the law, but to that guilt and transgression which the law, through the letter, was making when grace was lacking. And so of that law both things are said: both 'The law is good, if a man use it lawfully,' and what follows: 'knowing this, that the law is not laid down for the righteous' — because he has no need of the terrifying letter whom righteousness itself delights.
This bride of Christ, rejoicing in the hope of her full salvation, wishes for you too a good conversion from fables to the truth, lest, dreading Adonai as though an adulterer, you remain with that most crafty adulterer, the serpent. For Adonai is a Hebrew word and is interpreted 'Lord' in that manner in which God alone is called Lord — just as 'latria,' which is a Greek word and is interpreted 'service,' not any service whatever, but that by which God alone is served; just as 'Amen' is interpreted 'true,' not everywhere and in any manner, but in mystical religion. But if it be asked of you whence you too possess these, apart from the Hebrew letters or those which are from the Hebrew, you will find nothing. The Church of Christ, therefore, does not fear the objection of these names: she understands and loves them.
Nor does she heed the unskilled mocker; and the things she does not yet understand, she believes to be such as certain things she has already experienced, which likewise were once not yet understood. Let anyone reproach her that she has come to love 'Emmanuel'—she laughs at the ignorance of such a man, and embraces the truth of this name. Let one reproach that she has loved the 'Messiah'—she rejects the destroyed adversary and holds fast the anointed master. Thus does He desire that you too be healed of your vain errors and built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. You who speak of a Hippocentaur, not knowing what you say, do not even notice what your own fable has wrought against you, when out of a portion of your god and a portion of the earth of darkness it fabricates a false world in your heart. Is not that very one a Hippocentaur, half beast and half god?
Truly so, for it should not even be called a Hippocentaur. But what it is, do you attend, and blush and be tamed, that you may shudder at your corruption by the adulterous serpent. If you did not think his cunning worthy of belief in Moses, you ought to have guarded against it in Paul, who, wishing to present the true Church as a chaste virgin to Christ, said: 'I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity that is in Christ.' Though you heard this, you were nevertheless so far bereft of sense and made mad by his venomous incantations that, whereas to many other heresies that same serpent has persuaded now one thing, now another, to you he has persuaded even that he himself is Christ.
Furthermore, if many women err, ensnared by his varied and manifold deceptions, yet even these confess this admonition of the apostle to be true—how greatly have you been adulterated, how far off have you been prostituted, you who hold that very one in place of Christ, by whom the apostle cries out that Eve was seduced and corrupted from Christ, so that by such an admonition he might guard the virgin bride of Christ from him! He has darkened your heart, he who wallows with you in the phantasms of luminous groves. What are they, where are they, whence are they—his faithful promises? O drunken one, but not with wine! Assuredly you have railed with sacrilegious impudence against the God of the prophets, because He did not bestow upon the very Jews who served Him what He promised.
Nor indeed did you say what He promised and did not bestow, lest you be there convicted either that it has already been bestowed—which you do not understand—or that it is still to come—which you do not believe. What has been promised and presented to you, whence faith might arise in you that you shall receive the triumphs of new ages over the earth of darkness? If you should bring forward any prophets in whom we might read the coming Manichaeans foretold with praise, so that you might think something already bestowed upon you—by this very fact, since we see that you exist, you must first prove that Manichaeus himself did not invent those prophets for you, he who willed that you should believe in him.
For he does not think a lie shameful, nor indeed can he doubt about pointing out false prophets in sheep's clothing, he who, while praising Christ, asserts that Christ showed false scars in His members. But I read that you were plainly foretold, not only by the prophets at times more obscurely, but also by the apostle more expressly. Yet see in what manner.
'The Spirit,' he says, 'expressly declares that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, in the hypocrisy of liars who have their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who have known the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving.' How these things have been fulfilled in you, it touches the eyes of all who have known you more clearly than the light, and we have shown it above in its due place.
But she—whom the apostolic teaching, presenting her as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ, admonishes to beware of the deceit of the serpent by which you were corrupted—she acknowledges the God of the prophets, the true God, her own God; to His final promise she trusts securely, whose promises, so great, she already holds fulfilled, nor does anyone say that prophets were invented for the present time to serve her—those prophets which she asserts are in the books of the Jews. For what more incredible thing was promised than that which was said to Abraham: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed'? And what more certain do we now hold as fulfilled? That surely is His final promise, which the prophet briefly recalls thus: 'Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they shall praise Thee for ever and ever.'
For when all need is ended and death, the last enemy, is destroyed, the perpetual praise of God will be the occupation of those at rest: to which no one shall henceforth approach, from which no one shall henceforth depart. This the prophet elsewhere thus recalls: 'Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion. For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; He hath blessed thy children within thee.' The gates being closed, none shall enter, none shall go out. This too the Bridegroom Himself in the Gospel says to the foolish virgins, that even to them knocking He will not open. This Jerusalem, the holy Church, the bride of Christ, is described more copiously and richly in the Apocalypse of John.
Let not the chaste virgin believe this prophetic promise, if she does not already hold what was promised her through the same prophecy as to come at this time: 'Hearken, O daughter, and behold, and incline thine ear; and forget thine own people and thy father's house, for the King hath greatly desired thy beauty, for He is thy God, and the daughters of Tyre shall adore Him with gifts; the rich of the people shall entreat thy countenance. All the glory of the King's daughter is within, in golden fringes, clothed about with varieties; virgins shall be brought to the King after her, her companions shall be brought to thee; in gladness and rejoicing they shall be led into the temple of the King. Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee; thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.'
'They shall remember thy name throughout every offspring and generation; therefore the peoples shall confess to thee for ever and ever.' But you, wretched one, corrupted by the serpent—when do you even try to consider what is the beauty of the King's daughter within? For that is the chastity of the mind, wherein you have been defiled, so that your eyes were opened to loving and adoring the sun and moon, as if by the just judgment of God you were estranged from the tree of life, which is eternal and inward wisdom; and you called and thought nothing else to be truth and wisdom save this light which, drawn in through ill-opened eyes and enlarged beyond measure and variously multiplied through torch-like images, you tossed about with an unchaste mind.
—These are your fornications, exceedingly to be abhorred. And yet consider them patiently, and 'return to me,' says the Truth. 'Return to me, and thou shalt be cleansed, thou shalt be restored,' if you are confounded within yourself and are poured back to me. Hear this, this the true Truth says—which neither fought with the race of darkness in deceptive forms nor redeemed you with deceptive blood. BOOK SIXTEEN. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not accept Moses, since Christ says: 'Moses wrote of me,' and: 'If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me also'? Indeed I would wish not only that Moses wrote of Christ, but also all the prophets of the Jews and of the Gentiles.
For what harm would this do to our faith, or rather what benefit would it not bring, if from every side we gathered testimonies fitting and agreeable to our God? Since even then it would be free to us—while hatred and abhorrence of their superstition remained—to cull from those same sources only the prophecies about Christ; so far is it from being able to be contrary to me, if Moses too, however alien he be from Christ, yet seems to have written something not without bearing on Christ. Or would any man not wish to gather a flower from among all thorns, fruit from every plant, honey from all flies—although we take neither flies nor grass for food, nor thorns for the adornment of a crown?
Or would anyone be unwilling that a pearl should be born in every deep, gems in all lands, fruit in all forests? And just as to eat a fish from the sea does no harm, to drink water does harm, and men know how, when useful things are taken, to spit out the harmful—would we not be free, when the rite of any given religion has been condemned, if it were useless to us, to accept from it only the prophecies about Christ? Nor would this profit its errors toward capturing us and reducing us into its own bondage. For not even to the unclean spirits, though they confessed openly and without dissembling that Jesus was the Son of God, did it profit that they should be at all beloved by us.
Wherefore if Moses too, according to this testimony, wrote something about Christ, I will accept it—yet in such a way that it should in no wise profit him toward captivating me into his own law, which I see differs in nothing from paganism. Therefore there is nothing at all for you to suppose, if this be proved, that I would in the least rejoice that every spirit had prophesied of Christ. To you indeed I will render insufficient thanks, if, just as you show that Christ testified Moses wrote of Him, you also teach this: what precisely are the things he wrote. For I indeed, having searched through his scriptures as I was bidden, found there no prophecies about Christ—whether because there are none, or because I myself could not understand.
Whence, placed in a mighty ferment, I was by reason driven to one of two things: either to pronounce this passage false, or Jesus a liar. But it was indeed foreign to piety to deem God a liar. More rightly, therefore, did it seem to ascribe falsehood to the writers than a lie to the author of truth. Especially since I also heard Him Himself saying that all who came before Him were thieves and robbers: by which sentence I see, first of all, Moses to be struck. Besides this, when the Jews, indignant, cried out against Him as He spoke of His majesty, where He calls Himself the light of the world:
'Because thou bearest witness of thyself, thy witness is not true'—I do not see Him pursuing the matter where the occasion most demanded it, namely to say that Moses had prophesied of Him; but as though truly a stranger, having no testimony from their fathers, He answered: 'It is written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself; and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me'—reminding them of that which, spoken from heaven, all had heard: 'This is my most beloved Son, believe Him.'
Moreover, this too does not seem probable to me: that the Jews could have kept silent, when Christ said that Moses wrote of Him, without immediately—being as they were malicious and crafty—asking what precisely it was that He thought had been written of Him by Moses. But this all-around silence of theirs no less signifies that Jesus said no such thing. Although, therefore, even these considerations seem not small toward confirming the suspicion of falsehood concerning this passage, yet I am held more by that: because, as I said, having searched all the scripture of Moses, I found there no prophecies about Christ.
Now nevertheless, having found you a reader of better understanding, I believe I shall attain something, and I confess I shall render thanks, if the hope of progress and instruction which the confidence of your rebuke promises me—you frustrate me by no envy, but teach, if there be anything which perhaps escaped me as I read, recorded about God and about our Lord in the scripture of Moses. And do not, I beg, say, as the unskilled are wont, that this itself ought to suffice for faith, namely that Christ said Moses wrote of Him. For I do not now wish you to look to me, whom my profession has made liable to believe, so that I cannot but believe Him whom I follow; but suppose that we are dealing with a Jew, suppose with a Gentile.
When we say to them, 'Moses wrote of Christ,' they will ask for proofs. What shall we offer? Can we possibly say, 'Christ said this,' to One in whom they as yet in no way believe? Surely it will be needful for us to show them what he wrote. What then shall we show? Perhaps that which you are wont to adduce, where his God speaks to Moses saying: 'I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee'? But that this in no way pertains to Christ is hidden neither from the Jew, nor is it profitable for us to believe so; for Christ is not a prophet, nor a prophet like Moses—since that one was a man, this one God; that one a sinner, this one holy; that one born of intercourse, this one according to you of a virgin, but according to me not even of a virgin;
that one, having offended his God, is slain on the mountain; this one, being most well-pleasing to the Father, suffers of His own will. How then shall he himself be a prophet like Moses? Surely the Jew will straightway either laugh at us as unskilled or convict us as liars. Or shall we offer him that which you likewise are wont to bring in: 'They shall see their life hanging, and shall not believe'? To which you indeed add 'on the tree'—for it does not have it. But to prove that this too in no way pertains to Christ, nothing is so ready at hand. For among the fierce curses which he uttered against his own people, if they should defect from his law, he added even this.
saying that these same people would be in the captivity of their enemies and would ponder their own end day and night, so that they should have no confidence even in their own life, which had been granted them by the victors, because that same life would hang from uncertainty, ever fearful and anxious under the imminence of swords. Not even this, therefore, pertains to Christ; other things must be sought. For that indeed I could scarcely believe you think said of Christ: that everyone is cursed who hangs upon a tree, or that other thing, that a prophet or a leader of the people is to be killed who would turn them away from their God or infringe anything of the commandments. Which I indeed cannot plainly deny that Christ did.
But you, on the contrary, will not be able plainly to confess that these things are written about Him, lest, if this be so, we begin again to ask in what spirit Moses prophesied, either to curse Christ or to command Him to be killed. For if he had the Spirit of God, he did not say these things of Christ; if he said these things of Christ, he did not have the Spirit of God. For neither would the divine Spirit either curse Christ or command Him to be slain. Therefore, that you may vindicate Moses from this crime, you must needs confess that he did not write even these things about Christ. But if he wrote not these things about Christ, either you will give others, or there will be none. If there were none, neither could Christ have asserted what is nowhere.
Thus, if Christ in no way asserted this, it will be established that that passage is false. But neither indeed is that probable which follows: 'If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me also'—since the tradition of Moses and of Christ is very dissimilar and far otherwise, so that if the Jews believed one of the two, they would necessarily oppose the other.
For Moses indeed teaches above all others that one must abstain from every work on the Sabbath, and he adduces this as the reason of this religion: that God, when He was fashioning the world and all things in it, devoted six days to work but rested on the seventh—which is the Sabbath—and therefore blessed it, that is, sanctified it, as it were the harbor of His own tranquility, and gave a law besides, that whoever should violate it should be killed. This therefore the Jews vehemently believed, Moses teaching it, and for that reason thought that not even their ears should be lent to Christ asserting that God always works and has appointed for Himself no day of ceasing, because His power is perpetual and untiring; and that He therefore ought never to cease, not even on the Sabbaths;
'for my Father,' He says, 'works even until now, and I must work.' Likewise Moses reckons the circumcision of the flesh among things sacred and pleasing to God, and commands that every male be circumcised in the flesh of their foreskin, and teaches that this is a necessary sign of that covenant which his God established with Abraham, and affirms that whichever of the two sexes' males does not bear this, he shall be exterminated from his tribe and shall not come into the fellowship of the inheritance which was promised to Abraham and to his seed. This too, therefore, the Jews had strongly believed, Moses asserting it, and for that reason could not put faith in Christ, who weakened these things and moreover asserted that he who was circumcised would become doubly a son of hell.
Likewise Moses makes an anxious distinction of fleshly foods, and sits as an arbiter between fishes and birds and quadrupeds after the manner of a glutton, and commands that some indeed be licked up as clean, but others not even touched as unclean: among which in part he brands the pig and the hare, and whatever among fishes lacks a scale, or among quadrupeds does not have a cloven hoof and does not chew the cud. These things therefore the Jews strongly believed, Moses writing them, and for that reason
they could no longer believe Christ, who taught the indifference of foods, and from His own disciples indeed removed everything utterly, but to the worldly at large granted everything that could be eaten, and asserted that nothing entering into the mouth defiled them, because it is only the things that proceed imprudently out of the mouth that defile a man. That Jesus dogmatized these and many other things contrary to Moses, no one is who does not know. And since to run through them one by one is long, I will show one for many, namely this: that the greatest part of the Christian heresies and—what is more obvious—the catholics care to keep none of the things that Moses writes.
And this very thing, if it descends not from some error but from that true tradition of Christ and His disciples, you must needs altogether confess that Jesus and Moses taught things mutually contrary, and that therefore Christ was not believed by the Jews because they wished to render faith to Moses. To what end, therefore, will it not be false that He said to them of the law: 'If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me also'? Since it is far manifest that they rather did not believe Jesus for this reason, that they believed Moses, but could have put faith in Christ if they had ceased to believe Moses. Yet you, as I said, teach us, I pray, where Moses wrote anything about Christ. 'Otherwise,' he says, 'if you are a Christian, believe Christ who says that Moses wrote of Him;
but if you do not believe, you are not a Christian.' This is always the inept and feeble response of those who have nothing to show. How much better, then, would you have done, if you had simply confessed the same? And yet you could have said this to me, whom you know to be under necessity of believing for the sake of the religion by which I serve Christ—although this very thing is still in question, whether this too be a testimony of Christ, so that it ought to be believed absolutely, or of a writer, so that it ought to be carefully examined. Nor, if we did not believe falsehoods, do we hereby offend Christ, but the falsifiers. Yet somehow this could be borne when set against Christians. But what shall we do about those whom I mentioned, namely the Jew and the Gentile, to whom we cannot say: 'If you are a Christian, believe;
if you do not believe, you are not a Christian'? Although concerning the Christian you might most rightly have said this, since Christ did not spurn the apostle Thomas doubting about Him; but, that He might heal the wounds of his soul, He showed the scars of His body, and did not say: 'If you are a disciple, believe; if you do not believe, you are not a disciple.' You would say this to me not as one doubting about Christ, but about the sentence, whether it be His or interpolated. 'But,' you say, 'He calls those more blessed who have not seen and have believed.' If you think this was said for this reason, that we should believe anything without reason and judgment, be you the more blessed without sense; I shall be content to have heard, blessed with reason. AUGUSTINE replied: