In which words of the Lord you ought to note both things: both how great honor was rendered to the doctrine of Moses, in whose chair even the wicked, when they sat, were compelled to teach good things, and whence a proselyte became a son of hell — not, that is, from hearing the words of the Law from the Pharisees, but from following their deeds. This, then, could be said to a proselyte circumcised at that time, which Paul says: 'Circumcision indeed profits, if you keep the Law.' But because that man, in not keeping the Law, imitated the Pharisees, he became a son of hell — on this account, as I judge, twofold more than they, because he neglected to fulfill this which he had taken up by his own will, being not born of the Jews, but of his own accord made a Jew.
But what did you mean to say, insultingly and without respect, that Moses sits as an arbiter after the manner of a glutton, and commands some things indeed to be gobbled up as clean, but others, as unclean, not even to be touched? — whereas it belongs rather to a glutton to distinguish nothing, or, if he does distinguish, to choose the more delicious. Or do you say this in order that to the untaught your continence may seem marvellous, as though from your earliest age — as of one who does not know, or has now forgotten, how much more pleasantly pork tastes than mutton?
But because Moses wrote even these things with prophetic figures concerning Christ, signifying in the flesh of animals the men either to be incorporated into the body of Christ, which is the Church, or to be spat out, he figured you too among the unclean, you who therefore do not agree with the catholic faith, because you neither chew the cud of the word of wisdom, nor, not distinguishing harmoniously the two Testaments, the Old and the New, have you, as it were, the cloven hoof. But who could endure that you too were not ashamed to follow the deceit of your Adimantus?
For you too say that 'Christ so taught the indifference of foods that he entirely removed all flesh-meats from his own disciples, but conceded to worldly people at large all things that could be eaten, and asserted that nothing entering into the mouth defiled them, because those things which imprudently proceed from the mouth are alone the things which defile a man.' These are your words, brought forth and expressed with a falsehood the more shameless as it is the more open. First, because, according to Christ's own opinion, if those things alone defile a man which proceed evil from the mouth, why did not those things alone defile the disciples of Christ, so that they should need to be prohibited as it were from unclean flesh-meats?
Or are worldly men not defiled by those things which enter into the mouth, but by those which go out of the mouth? Then they are more fortified against uncleanness than the saints, if both the things which enter and the things which go out can pollute the saints. But I would have these men tell me: what did Christ eat and drink, who, in comparison with John who neither ate nor drank, said that he ate and drank? For when he reproved the perverseness of men seeking occasions of slander on both sides, 'John,' he says, 'came neither eating nor drinking, and they say: He has a demon; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.' And John's food and drink indeed we know;
for it was not said that he drank nothing at all, but that he drank neither wine nor strong drink: therefore he drank water. And his food was not nothing at all, but locusts and wild honey. Whence, then, was he said to be 'neither eating nor drinking,' save because he did not use that fare which the Jews used? Unless, then, the Lord used this, he would not, in comparison with him, be called 'eating and drinking.' Or perhaps it is because the Lord fed on bread and vegetables, on which John did not feed? It is strange if he is called 'not eating' who eats locusts and honey, and he is called 'eating' who is content with bread and vegetables. But suspect what you will concerning foods: certainly he would not be called 'drinking' and 'a wine-bibber' unless he drank wine.
Why, then, do you count even this unclean? For you do not forbid the touching of these things for the sake of continence and the discipline of taming the body, but because they are unclean; for you declare that these are the filth and gall of the nation of darkness — against the apostle who says: 'To the clean all things are clean.' Behold those who dare to say that Christ was the master of the indifference of foods, and yet forbade his disciples those things which they themselves think unclean. Show, you liars, you reprobates, where he removed these things from his disciples! Yet by the providence of the avenging God so blinded that you even remind us whence you may be convicted. 'I suffer no violence from my own mind,'
unless I insert for inspection that whole chapter of the Gospel which this man wished to set against Moses, so that there we may see how false it is that first Adimantus, and now Faustus, said that the Lord Jesus removed flesh-meats from being eaten by his disciples, and conceded them to worldly people at large. For indeed, when he had answered those slandering him because they ate with unwashed hands, the Gospel thus continues: 'And having called the crowds together, he said to them: Hear and understand. Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man, but what proceeds from the mouth defiles a man.' Then the disciples, approaching, said to him: 'Do you know that the Pharisees, when they heard this word, were scandalized?' Here surely, being addressed by his disciples, he ought,
as these men would have it, properly to teach that abstinence must be made from all flesh-meats, so that what he said above — 'Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man, but what proceeds from the mouth' — might seem to have been said to the crowds. Let the evangelist, then, follow on and say what the Lord answered now not to the crowds, but to the disciples. But he, answering, said: 'Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind leaders of the blind. And if a blind man lead a blind man, both shall fall into the ditch.' This surely for the reason that, wishing to establish their own traditions, they did not understand the commandments of God. But the disciples had not yet inquired of the master how they themselves ought to take what he had said to the crowds. Behold, this too takes place;
for the evangelist connects and says: 'But Peter, answering, said to him: Expound to us this parable.' From this we understand that Peter supposed the Lord to have spoken not properly nor openly, when he said, 'Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man, but what proceeds from the mouth,' but, as is his wont, to have wished to signify something by the obscurity of a parable. Let us see, then, whether now, with the disciples inquiring more secretly, he says this which the Manichaeans wish — that all flesh-meats are unclean, and that they ought to touch none of them. What? — for he reproaches them, that they did not yet understand his open speech, and think that what was properly said is a parable. For thus it follows: 'But he said:
'Are you also still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything which enters into the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the privy? But the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and those defile a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.' Surely now the exposed deceit departs convicted; surely now it is clear that the Lord did not teach the crowds one thing and the disciples in secret another; surely without doubt it is perceived that the Manichaeans rather are the liars and deceivers, not Moses, not Christ.
There the doctrine of both Testaments is figured; here it is revealed; there prophesied, here presented. How, then, do they suppose that catholics keep none of those things which Moses wrote, when they observe absolutely all of them — not now in figures, but in those very realities which those figures foreannounced by signifying? For not even, if it were one time for writing and another for reading, should we rightly say that a reader does not observe that scripture, because he himself would not make those characters, since those had been figures of sounds, but he now utters the very sounds — occupied not with the forming of those figures, but admonished by the inspection of them.
But the Jews did not believe in Christ for this reason, that they did not even observe those things which Moses had commanded not figuratively but openly. Whence he says to them: 'You tithe mint and cummin, and leave the weightier matters of the Law, mercy and judgement, straining out a gnat, but swallowing a camel: these things you ought to have done, and not to omit those.' Whence too is that saying, that they taught by their traditions how the commandment of God might be weakened, by which he had bidden honor to be paid to parents; on account of which pride and iniquity they deserved to be blinded, so that they did not understand the rest, because they impiously despised those things which they did understand. Do you see how — I will not say to you: if you are a Christian, believe Christ when he says that Moses wrote of him; but if you do not believe,
you are not a Christian. For you yourself shall see what you think of yourself, who ask to be taught concerning Christ as a Gentile or a Jew; yet I have not shrunk even from this, and I have, as far as I could, closed to you all the approaches of error. Nor have I let that precipice lie open, over which you blind men cast yourselves, saying that things are false in the Gospel wherever your heresy finds no way out, so that nothing may remain to you by which you might return — whence you might believe Christ — where this pestilent utterance cannot be set against you. Nay, you even desire to be taught as the Christian Thomas, whom Christ, doubting concerning himself, did not spurn, but, that he might heal the wounds of his mind, showed him the scars of his body. These are your words. Well, that you demand to be taught thus.
For I was afraid lest you should contend that this too in the Gospel is false! Believe, then, the scars of Christ; for if those scars were true, those wounds also had been true, and true wounds none but true flesh could have had: this truth overthrows your whole error. Further, if Christ displayed false scars to the doubting disciple, then you call him also a deceiver, teaching thus, and you desire to be deceived, learning thus. But since there is no one who wishes to be deceived, whereas many wish to deceive, I understand that you rather wish, as it were by the example of Christ, to teach deceitfully, than by the example of Thomas to learn deceitfully. Accordingly, if you believe.
That Christ deceived the doubter with false scars — who would wish to believe you as you teach this, rather than to be on guard against you as one who deceives? But if that disciple touched the true scars of Christ, you are compelled to confess also the true flesh of Christ. Thus you will not remain a Manichaean if you believe as Thomas did; yet you will remain an unbeliever if you do not so much as believe as Thomas did. BOOK SEVENTEEN. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not accept the Law and the Prophets, since Christ said that he had not come to abolish them but to fulfil them? Who testifies that Jesus said this? Matthew. Where did he say it? On the mountain. In whose presence? Peter, Andrew, James, and John — these four only; for he had not yet chosen the rest, nor Matthew himself.
Of these four, one — namely John — wrote a Gospel. Does he anywhere record this himself? Nowhere. How then did Matthew write what John, who was on the mountain, does not attest — Matthew, who followed him a long while afterward, after Jesus had come down from the mountain? And on this very account there is first the doubt whether Jesus said any such thing, since a suitable witness is silent, while a less suitable one speaks. Let us for the moment grant that we have done Matthew an injury, until we prove that he too did not write these things, but some person unknown under his name — which the oblique narration of that same reading of Matthew itself teaches. For what does it say?
'And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man sitting at the tax-office, named Matthew, and called him; and he at once rose up and followed him.' Now who, writing about himself, would say 'he saw a man and called him and he followed him,' rather than say: he saw me and called me and I followed him — unless it is established that Matthew did not write these things, but some unknown person under his name? Since therefore, even if Matthew himself had written this, it would not be true — he who was not present when Jesus spoke these things on the mountain — how much less must it be believed, seeing that not even Matthew wrote these same things, but another under the names of both Jesus and Matthew! What of this? — that even from the discourse itself.
By the very command not to suppose that he had come to abolish the Law, it is rather given to be understood that he did abolish it. For unless he were doing something of the sort, the Jews could not have suspected this. But he says, 'Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law.' Come then: what if the Jews had said to him, But what such thing are you doing, from which we might suspect this? — was it that you deride circumcision, violate the Sabbath, reject sacrifices, confound the dietary laws? So this is the meaning of 'Do not think'? And what more or what plainer could be done toward the destruction of the Law and the Prophets? Or if this is to fulfil the Law, what will it be to abolish it? What of this? — that the Law and the Prophets do not even rejoice in being fulfilled, so full and complete do they seem to themselves:
whose author and father disdains no less to have anything added to it than taken away, so that writing in Deuteronomy he says: These precepts which I command you this day, O Israel, you shall observe; and take heed that you turn not aside from them either to the left or to the right, and add nothing to them nor take anything away, but you shall persevere in them, that the Lord your God may bless you. Wherefore, if for the sake of fulfilling it Jesus added something to the Law and the Prophets, he seems to have slipped to the right; or if he took something away in order to destroy it, to the left; either way he certainly offends the author of the Law, and therefore either that saying means something else or it is false. AUGUSTINE replied: O marvellous madness — to be unwilling to believe Matthew when he relates something about Christ, and to be willing to believe a Manichaean!
If Matthew was not present when Christ had said, 'I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfil them,' and therefore he is not to be believed — was the Manichaean present, or even yet born, when Christ appeared among men? According to this law of your faith, then, you ought to have believed nothing that he testifies about Christ. We, however, do not say that the Manichaean is not to be believed because he was not present at Christ's words and deeds and was born long afterward, but because he speaks of Christ against Christ's disciples and against the Gospel, which is confirmed by their authority. For we have the voice of the Apostle, who, in the Holy Spirit, foresaw that such men would come, whence he said to the faithful:
If anyone shall preach to you any gospel besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. For if no one speaks the truth about Christ except one who saw and heard him in person, then today no one speaks the truth about him. But if today true things are told to his faithful about him because those who saw and heard him spread them abroad by preaching or by writing, why could not Matthew hear the truth about Christ from the mouth of his fellow-disciple John, in a matter at which John was present and he himself was not? — if from the book of John we are able to speak the truth about Christ, not only we who are born so long after, but also others who shall be born after us? For hence not only Matthew's Gospel but also those of Luke and Mark, who followed the same disciples,
have been received into an authority not inferior. To this is added that the Lord himself could have related to Matthew what he had done with those he had first called, before he called Matthew. But (you say) John himself ought to have put this in his own Gospel, if he had heard this said by the Lord — he who, when it was spoken, was present. As though it could not happen that, since he could not write everything he had heard from the Lord, among the other things he passed over he passed over this too, being intent on writing other things. Did he not himself thus conclude his Gospel, saying: And Jesus did indeed many other things also, which if they were written every one, I suppose that not even the world itself could contain the books that should be written? Here at any rate he shows that he knew he had passed over many things.
But if the authority of John delights you concerning the Law and the Prophets, believe John when he bears witness to the Law and the Prophets. He himself wrote that Isaiah saw the glory of Christ — you have it in his Gospel. Whence, a little before, we already treated of it: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.' On every side your evasion is crushed. Say openly that you do not believe Christ's Gospel; for whoever believes in the Gospel what he pleases and does not believe what he pleases, believes himself rather than the Gospel. But what an elegant point Faustus thought he was making, when he wished it not to be believed that Matthew wrote these things, because when he spoke of his own election, he did not say: he saw me and said to me, Follow me — but:
'he saw Matthew and said to him, Follow me.' Whether he said this out of the error of ignorance or out of a habit of deceit, I do not know. But I would not suppose him so ignorant as not to have read or heard that writers of history, when they enter into their own person, are wont so to weave their account as to relate about themselves as though about another. I therefore rather judge that he wished, not as an ignorant man, but as one casting a fog before the ignorant, hoping to catch the more of those who did not know these things. And examples of such narration are indeed found in the history of secular affairs; but there is no need for me either to instruct our own people or to refute this man from another kind of literature.
He himself certainly, a little before, cited certain testimonies from the books of Moses in such a way as not to deny that Moses wrote them — nay, even affirmed it, but contended that they did not pertain to Christ. Let them read then, in those same books, what Moses wrote about himself: whether he wrote thus: I said, or: I did this or that, and not rather: Moses said, and: Moses did; or: the Lord called me, or: the Lord said to me, and not rather: the Lord called Moses, and: the Lord said to Moses, and all the rest in the same manner. So then Matthew too wrote about himself as though about another — which John also did. For toward the end of his book he too speaks thus: Peter, turning about, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved,
who also had reclined at supper on his breast and had said to the Lord: Who is it that shall betray you? Did he here too say: Peter, turning about, saw me? Or do they perhaps for this reason think that even this man did not write that Gospel? But a little after he says: This is the disciple who testifies of Jesus and who wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. Did he say: I am the disciple who testify of Jesus and who wrote these things, and: We know that my testimony is true? Certainly it is plain that it was the custom of writers, when they narrated deeds. And how many things the Lord himself says about himself in the same manner of speech, who could suffice to enumerate them? 'When the Son of Man comes,' he says, 'do you suppose he will find faith on earth?' He did not say: when I come.
'Do you suppose I will find?' And: 'The Son of Man came eating and drinking' — he did not say: I came. And: 'The hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they who hear shall live' — he did not say: my voice — and many things of this kind. Whence I think what has been said is now sufficient both to admonish the studious and to convict the calumnious. Now, how weak that is — who does not see it? — where he says that Jesus could not have said: 'Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfil,' unless he had already done something of the sort so as to be able to come under this suspicion. As though we deny that Christ could have seemed to the Jews, who did not understand, to be a destroyer of the Law and the Prophets:
but this is the very point: why that Truthful One, indeed Truth itself, could not have spoken of some other law and other prophets, when he said that he did not abolish them, save of those which they suspected him of abolishing. And this is sufficiently confirmed also from what follows, where he goes on and says: Amen, amen, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass, one iota or one apex shall not pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled. Whoever therefore shall abolish one of these least commandments and shall so teach men, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever shall do and so teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For he was thinking of the Pharisees when he said these things — who abolished the Law by their deeds and taught it by their words — of whom he says in another place: 'What they say, do;
but do not according to their works; for they say, and do not.' For this reason here too it follows thus: For I say to you, unless your righteousness abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. That is: unless you both do and so teach what they do not do, though they so teach, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore the very Law which the Pharisees taught and did not do — that Law Christ says he did not come to abolish but to fulfil, because it pertains to the seat of Moses, in which the Pharisees, sitting and speaking but not doing, are to be heard, not imitated.
Nor does Faustus understand, or perhaps he pretends not to understand, what it is to fulfil the Law, when he thinks this is to be taken of the addition of words, because it is written that nothing should be added to or taken from the Scripture of God; whence he says that what is commended as so perfect that nothing is to be added or diminished ought not to have been 'fulfilled.' These men, then, do not know how he fulfils the Law who so lives as the Law prescribed. For love is the fulfilment of the Law, as the Apostle says. This love the Lord deigned both to display and to bestow, by sending the Holy Spirit to his faithful; whence the same Apostle likewise says: The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us. And the Lord himself:
By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. The Law therefore is fulfilled either when those things are done which are there commanded, or when those things are displayed which are there prophesied. For the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. When the Law itself is fulfilled, grace and truth come about. Grace pertains to the fullness of love, truth to the fulfilment of the prophecies. And because both are through Christ, therefore he came not to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfil them — not that the things lacking should be added to the Law, but that the things written should come to pass; as his very words attest. For he did not say: one iota or one apex shall not pass from the Law
until the things lacking be added, but: till all be fulfilled. BOOK EIGHTEEN. FAUSTUS said: 'I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfil it.' But this saying — unless it perhaps means something else — you must know is no less contrary to you than to me, if you believe it was said by Christ. For each of us is a Christian under this opinion, that we supposed Christ came for the destruction of the Law and the Prophets. And if you are for the moment unwilling to confess this in word, yet you indicate it by your works. For hence it is that you yourself despise the precepts of the Law and the Prophets; hence, that both of us confess Jesus founded a New Testament: by which what else do we confess than the destruction of the Old Testament?
Since this is so, how shall we believe that Christ said that, unless we first condemn our own foolish opinion held in the past, and have recourse to repentance, and submit ourselves anew to the Law and the Prophets, and take care to observe their commandments, of whatever sort they are? And when we have done this, then at last we shall truly have believed that Jesus said he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfil it. But as it is, it is false, since not even you believe it — the very thing of which you accuse me alone. But be it so: suppose one was permitted to err in the past. What now, in the end? Does it please you to go under the Law, if Christ did not so much abolish it as fulfil it? Does it please you to be circumcised — that is, to mark the shameful parts on the shameful parts — and to believe that God is delighted with such sacraments?
Does it please you to take up the idleness of the Sabbaths and to thrust your hands into Saturn's chains? Does it please you now, for the gluttony of a demon of the Jews — for it is not of God — to strike down with knives now bulls, now rams, now even he-goats (not to say also men), and, on account of which we hold idols in abhorrence, to practise that now more cruelly under the Prophets and the Law? Does it please you, finally, to reckon certain of these deathly foods clean, and to hold others among the unclean and defiled — of which the Law and the Prophets assert swine's flesh to be the filthier? You will surely deny that any of these things must be done by us who wish to persevere in being what we are, since indeed you hear Christ saying that he who has been circumcised becomes doubly a son of Gehenna.
You see, moreover, that he neither himself kept the Sabbath nor anywhere commanded it to be kept. Likewise concerning foods you hear him affirming that a man is defiled by none of those things which enter into the mouth, but rather by those which proceed out of the mouth. Concerning sacrifices likewise, that his frequent saying is that God wishes mercy, not sacrifice. If then these things are so, where will that stand — that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfil them? And if he said it, either he said it meaning something else, or — which be far from him — he said it lying, or he did not say it at all. But that Jesus lied, let no one say, at least no Christian; and therefore either it was said in another sense or it was not said at all.
And yet, against the constraint of this chapter, the Manichaean faith has already rendered me safe, which from the beginning persuaded me not to believe indiscriminately all things that are read written under the name of the Saviour, but to test whether they are true, sound, uncorrupted; for there are very many tares which some night-wandering sower has scattered into almost all the Scriptures for the corruption of the good seed. And therefore not even here has this discourse frightened me, although it bears before it the inscription of a reverend name, since I am still permitted, according to my purpose, to test whether even this is of the daytime and good sower, or of that nocturnal and most wicked one. But you, who rashly believe everything,