Accordingly, that which is not so consecrated, although it be bread and cup, is the nourishment of refreshment, not the sacrament of religion — except that we bless and give thanks to the Lord in every gift of his, not only spiritual but also corporeal. But to you, through your fable, in all foods Christ is set bound, still to be bound by your entrails and to be released by your belchings. For both when you eat, you refresh yourselves by the failing of your god, and when you digest, you fail by his refreshing. For when he renders you full, your taking-up presses him down. Which indeed would be reckoned to his mercy — that he suffers something for you in you — were it not that he again leaves you empty, so that, freed by you, he may escape.
How then do you compare our bread and cup, and call the religion equal — an error far removed from the truth, doting worse than some who suppose that on account of the bread and cup we worship Ceres and Liber? This I thought worth recalling, that you may notice from what vanity that other charge of yours also comes — that you suppose our fathers were, on account of the sabbath, dedicated to Saturn. For just as we are far from Ceres and Liber, the gods of the pagans, although we embrace by our own rite the sacrament of the bread and cup which you so praised as to wish to be our equals in it: so our fathers were far from the chains of Saturn, although for the time of prophecy they observed the rest of the sabbath.
But why did you not also say, on account of 'hyle' — which is frequently mentioned in some books of the pagans — that you have a religion equal to that of the pagans? Nay rather, on account of this very thing you wished to be understood as unequal and far different, because by this name your theologian calls the principle and nature of evil. In this indeed your great inexperience is caught out, because you do not even know what hyle is, and yet, by this word for a thing which you utterly do not know, you affect even to be puffed up as learned. For the Greeks, when they discourse on nature, define hyle as a certain matter of things, in no way whatever formed, but capable of all corporeal forms, which indeed is somehow known in the mutability of bodies; for in itself it can neither be perceived nor understood.
But in this some of the Gentiles err, in that they join it to God as though co-eternal, so that it is not from him, although it is formed by him: which the Truth herself teaches to be foreign to the truth. See, however, to what pagans you are found to be alike concerning this very hyle, in that you too maintain that it has its own principle and is not from God, and in this you said you were unlike them, not knowing what you were saying. But in that other point, that this hyle has no form of its own and cannot be formed except by God, they agree with our truth, but dissent from your falsehood:
you who, not knowing what hyle is, that is, what the matter of things is, call it the race of darkness, where you set up not only innumerable corporeal forms distinguished into five kinds, but also a mind as the fashioner of these bodies — and, what is more inexperienced or rather more insane, you say that this mind itself is rather hyle, which you assert not to be formed but to form. For if there were there a certain mind that forms, and corporeal elements which were formed, those elements would have to be called hyle, that is, the matter which that same mind would form — that mind which you wish to be the principle of evil.
If you said this, you would not indeed greatly err concerning what hyle is, except that those very elements, although they were to be formed into other forms, yet because they would already be elements and would be distinguished by their own kinds, would not be hyle, because that is utterly formless. Nevertheless your inexperience would be tolerable, because you would call hyle that which was formed, not that which formed; but even so you would still be held to be vain and sacrilegious, because, not knowing that all measure of natures and number of forms and order of weights cannot be except from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you would attribute so great a good to the principle of evil.
But now, since you are ignorant both of what hyle is and of what evil is — oh, if only I could persuade you to restrain yourselves from seducing the more inexperienced! And indeed, as to the fact that in this too you wish to be better than the pagans — because they think God is to be worshipped with altars, shrines, images, victims, and incense, while you do none of these things — who would not laugh? As though it were not more satisfactory to set up an altar and offer a victim even to a stone, which in some way exists, than to adore in the raving of a phantasm that which utterly does not exist. But you, who have said that you are the rational temple of God, how will you explain this? Does it please you that God should have a temple, some part of which the devil has fashioned?
Or is it not you who say that all your members and your whole body were fashioned by a malignant mind, which you call hyle, and that a part of that very fashioner dwells there together with a part of your god? Since it is held there, as you assert, chained and enclosed, ought you to have called yourself the temple of God, or the prison of God? Unless perhaps you call your soul the temple of God, which you have from the earth of light. But that you are accustomed to call a part of God, or a member of God, not the temple of God. It remains, therefore, that you would not have called yourself the temple of God except in respect of the body, which according to you the devil fashioned. See how you blaspheme the temple of God, so as to say not only that it is not holy, but even that it is a contrivance of the devil and a workhouse of God.
But indeed the Apostle says: 'For the temple of God is holy, which you are'; and lest you think that what was said pertains only to the soul, hear it more expressly. 'Do you not know,' he says, 'that your bodies are the temple within you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God?' But you call the fabric of demons the temple of God, and there you place, as Faustus says, 'the living image of the living majesty,' Christ the Son of God. Plainly let your phantasmal Christ dwell in such a temple of sacrilegious vanity. For he can be called an image not from likeness but from simulation. So you have made your mind an altar too, but see whose. For from your very arts and disciplines it appears with what you said it was imbued.
Those arts and disciplines forbid to hold out bread to a begging man, that on your altar you may burn with a sacrifice of cruelty: an altar of the kind that the Lord destroys, who from the law recalls with what odour God is delighted, saying: 'I desire mercy rather than sacrifice.' But attend to where the Lord recalled this — namely, when he was passing through the grainfield and his hungry disciples were plucking the ears, which you say is homicide, out of your discipline, with which you have imbued your mind. An altar indeed not of God, but of lying demons, from whose teachings a malignant conscience is branded and cauterized, calling homicide that which the truth calls innocence.
For thus he says to the Jews, where he also smote and destroyed you who were to come: 'If you knew what "I desire mercy rather than sacrifice" means, you would never have condemned the innocent.' But what simple and pure prayers, as divine honours and sacrifices, will you be able to have, since you feel such unworthy and base things about the very nature and substance of God, so that not only is the true God not propitiated by your sacrifices, but your god is immolated in the sacrifices of the pagans? For you hold that he is bound with contaminating and polluting bonds not only in wood and in herbs or in human members, but even in the flesh of cattle.
But your very soul — to what god does it speak praise, when, crying aloud that it, being a particle of him, is held captive in the race of darkness, what else does it do but revile God, whom it testifies to have been unable in any other way to take counsel for himself against his enemies, except by so great a corruption and so base a captivity of his own parts? Whence your very prayers to your god cannot be religious, but only invidious. For what evil did you commit before him, that in this present punishment you should now groan to him — him whom you did not desert by sinning of your own will, but by whom you were handed over to his own enemies, that peace might be procured for his kingdom? — and not even, as hostages are wont to be given, to be guarded with honour, nor as a shepherd stretches out snares to catch a wild beast;
for a shepherd is wont to place in that snaring trap his own beast, not his own limb, and generally in such a way that the wild beast is caught before the beast is harmed. But you, the members of God, were handed over to enemies, unable to restrain their ferocity from your god except by being contaminated with their foulness, having no sin of your own, but being wasted away by hostile venom. Whence you cannot say in your prayers: 'For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us; and be merciful to our sins for your name's sake,' but you say: 'Deliver us by your art, because — that you may now mourn secure in your kingdom — we here are pressed, torn apart, defiled.' This voice is accusatory, not deprecatory. Nor can you say that which the Master of truth taught:
'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' For who are your debtors, who have sinned against you? If it is the race of darkness, do you indeed forgive its debts — the race which you shut up, rooted out to the very end, in an eternal prison? But what debts can that one forgive you — your god — when he rather sinned against you, by sending you to these things, than you against him, you who obeyed the one who sent you? Or if he did not sin for the reason that he did this of necessity, then your necessity is greater — since you now lie prostrate in the battle — than his was before you fought. For now you suffer the mingled evil; he suffered nothing of the kind, although he suffered the necessity of sending you.
And so either he rather owes you something to be forgiven by you, or, if he owes you nothing, then much more do you owe him nothing. Where then are your sacrifices, your simple and pure prayers, when they are deceitful and impure blasphemies? And yet I want you to tell me whence you call all these things which you praise in yourselves by these names, so that you speak of temple, altar, sacrifice. For if these true things are not owed to the true God, why are they laudably proclaimed in the true religion? But if a true sacrifice is duly owed to the true God, whence also divine honours are rightly named, then the other things which are called sacrifices are made after the likeness of a certain true sacrifice.
Now these are partly the imitations of false and deceitful gods, that is, of demons, who proudly demand for themselves divine honours from those whom they have deceived — as were, or are, all things in the temples and idols of the Gentiles — and partly the foretellings of that one most true sacrifice to come, which had to be offered for the sins of all believers, such as were the precepts given by God to our ancient fathers, where there was also that mystical anointing, by which Christ was prefigured, whence also the very name is derived from 'chrism.' Accordingly, the true sacrifice, which is owed to the one true God, whose altar Christ alone has filled, the demons, imitating it in the victims of cattle, arrogantly demand for themselves. Whence the Apostle says:
'The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God' — not blaming what was offered, but because it was offered to those. But the Hebrews, in the victims of cattle which they offered to God, in many and various ways, as was worthy of so great a thing, celebrated the prophecy of the future victim which Christ offered. Whence now Christians, that sacrifice having been accomplished, celebrate the memory of it by the most sacred oblation and participation of the body and blood of Christ.
But the Manichaeans, not knowing what is to be condemned in the sacrifices of the Gentiles, and what is to be understood in the sacrifices of the Hebrews, and what is to be held or observed in the sacrifice of the Christians, offer their vanity as something sacred to the devil, who deceived them as they withdrew from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and to the doctrines of demons through the hypocrisy of liars. Let Faustus then learn, or rather let those who are delighted by his writings learn, that we do not have the opinion of monarchy from the Gentiles, but that the Gentiles have not so far lapsed into false gods as to lose the opinion of the one true God, from whom is every nature of whatsoever kind.
For their wise men — because, as the Apostle says, the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, his eternal power also and Godhead, so that they are inexcusable — knowing God, did not glorify him as God, nor give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; for professing themselves to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things.
For these are the idols of the Gentiles, in interpreting which they have no outcome except to the creature which God has created, so that even in that very interpretation of the idols — of which their more skilled ones are wont to boast and be puffed up — there befalls them what the same Apostle says a little later: 'They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.' But you, both in that in which you are unlike them, are vain, and in that in which you are like them, are worse. For in this you do not believe in the monarchy along with them, in that which they truly believe, so that you believe the substance of that one God itself to be assailable and corruptible —
which is a matter of impious vanity; but in worshipping many gods, the doctrine of lying demons persuaded them of many idols, you of many phantasms. Nor do we turn their sacrifices into love-feasts (agapae). Rather, we understood that sacrifice which I mentioned a little before, the Lord saying: 'I desire mercy rather than sacrifice'; for our love-feasts feed the poor, whether with crops or with meats. For a creature of God is fed from a creature of God, which is suitable for the banquets of man.
But to you, because lying demons persuaded you to abstain from foods — not for the sake of governing the flesh, but for the exercise of blasphemy — foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who have known the truth, since every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving: you, ungrateful to the Creator and repaying with sacrilegious injuries for his lavish benefits — since very often in the love-feasts even meats are dispensed to the poor — you say that the mercy of Christians is like the sacrifices of the pagans, to some of whom you are like in this too. For you hold it wicked for cattle to be slain, because you suppose that human souls are transmigrated into them:
which is found in the books of certain Gentile philosophers, although it is said to have been understood otherwise by later ones. But in this too you err much more grievously; for they feared to slaughter their neighbour in the beast, but you fear to slaughter your god, whose members you suppose the souls of cattle also to be. Now, as to the fact that Faustus here too slanders us, because we honour the memorials of the martyrs, saying in this that we have converted the idols — this does not move me so much to answer this slander, as to show that Faustus himself, in his zeal for slandering, wished to swerve even from the vanities of Manichaeus himself, and, I know not how, incautiously fell into the vulgar and poetic opinion of the pagans, from whom he desires to be seen as most utterly estranged.
For when he had said that we had converted the idols into martyrs — 'whom,' he says, 'you worship with similar vows, and appease the shades of the dead with wine and with feasts' — are there then shades of the dead? We have never heard this in your discourses, we have never read it in your writings; nay, you are accustomed to contradict such opinions, asserting that the souls of the dead which are evil, or less purified, either go into transmigrations or into some heavier punishments, but that the good ones are placed in ships and, sailing in the sky, pass hence into that phantasm of the land of light, for which they had perished in fighting; so that no souls are detained around the sepulchres of their bodies. Whence then the shades of the dead? What is their substance? What their place?
But in his eagerness to slander, Faustus forgot what he was professing; or perhaps, drowsing, he dictated shadows as he dreamed, and did not wake up even when he read his own words. The Christian people, however, celebrate the memorials of the martyrs with religious solemnity, both to stir up imitation and that they may be joined to the martyrs' merits and helped by their prayers — yet in such a way that we set up altars to none of the martyrs, but to the very God of the martyrs, though we do so at the memorials of the martyrs. For which of the presiding priests, standing at the altar in the places of the holy bodies, has ever said:
'We offer to you, O Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian'? Rather, what is offered is offered to God, who crowned the martyrs, at the memorials of those whom he crowned, so that from the very reminder of these places a greater affection may arise to sharpen our love, both toward those whom we are able to imitate, and toward Him by whose help we are able to do so. We honor the martyrs, therefore, with that worship of love and fellowship with which in this life also the holy men of God are honored, whose heart we perceive to be prepared for a like suffering for the sake of the truth of the Gospel; but the martyrs we honor the more devoutly, in that they are the more secure, having overcome all their contests, and we proclaim them with more confident praise as already victors in the happier life, rather than as still contending in this present one.
But with that worship which in Greek is called latreia, and which cannot be rendered in Latin by a single word — since it is a certain service properly owed to the Divinity — we worship, and teach that men must worship, none but the one God. And since to this worship belongs the offering of sacrifice (whence those are said to practice idolatry who offer this even to idols), in no way do we offer anything of the kind, nor teach that it must be offered, to any martyr, or any holy soul, or any angel; and whoever slips into this error is corrected by sound doctrine, whether that he may be set right, or that others may be warned. For even the holy ones themselves, whether men or angels, do not wish that to be shown to them which they know is owed to the one God alone.
This appeared in Paul and Barnabas, when the Lycaonians, moved by the miracles wrought through them, wished to sacrifice to them as to gods — for, tearing their garments, confessing and persuading that they were not gods, they forbade these things to be done to them. It appeared also in the angels, as we read in the Apocalypse of the angel who forbade himself to be worshiped and said to his worshiper: 'I am a fellow-servant of you and of your brethren.' These honors plainly the proud spirits demand for themselves — the devil and his angels — as throughout all the temples and rites of the Gentiles. And the likeness of these has been expressed in certain proud men also, as we hold committed to memory concerning certain kings of Babylon.
Hence holy Daniel endured accusers and persecutors, because — when the king's edict had been issued that nothing should be asked of anyone but of the king alone — he was found worshiping and praying to his own God, that is, the one and true God. But those who make themselves drunk at the memorials of the martyrs, how can they be approved by us, when sound doctrine condemns them even if they do this in their own houses? But one thing is what we teach, another what we tolerate; one thing what we are bidden to enjoin, another what we are commanded to amend, and, until we amend it, are compelled to bear with. One thing is the discipline of Christians, another the excess of drunkards or the error of the weak. Yet even in this very matter the faults of drunkards and of the sacrilegious differ greatly.
For it is by far a lesser sin to return drunk from the martyrs than even, while fasting, to sacrifice to the martyrs. I said 'to sacrifice to the martyrs'; I did not say 'to sacrifice to God at the memorials of the martyrs.' This latter we do most frequently, but only by that rite by which He commanded, in the revelation of the New Testament, that sacrifice should be offered to Himself: which pertains to that worship called latria and owed to the one God alone. But what am I to do, and when shall I demonstrate to these heretics in their great blindness what force there is in what is sung in the Psalms: 'The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me; and there is the way whereby I will show him the salvation of God'?
The flesh and blood of this sacrifice, before the coming of Christ, was promised through the victims that were its likenesses; in the passion of Christ it was rendered through the truth itself; after the ascension of Christ it is celebrated through the sacrament of the memorial. And through this there is as great a difference between the sacrifices of the pagans and of the Hebrews as between an erring imitation and a foreshadowing that foretells. But just as the virginity of consecrated women is not on that account to be despised or detested, because the Vestals too were virgins, so the sacrifices of the fathers are not on that account to be reproached, because the Gentiles too have sacrifices.
For, just as among those forms of virginity there is a great difference, although nothing else differs except by whom and to whom it is vowed and rendered, so between the sacrifices of the pagans and of the Hebrews there is a great difference precisely in this, which alone differs: by whom and to whom they are immolated and offered. Those, namely, are offered to the proud impiety of demons, who arrogate this very thing to themselves for this reason — that they might be held to be gods, since sacrifice is a divine honor; but these were offered to the one God, that there might be offered to Him a likeness promising the truth of the sacrifice, to whom that very truth itself, once rendered, was to be offered in the passion of the body and blood of Christ.
For it is not the case, as Faustus said, that our forefathers the Jews, separated from the Gentiles, though they had a temple and immolations and altars and priesthoods, laid aside only carved images, that is, idols; for they could, like some, even without carved idols, have sacrificed to trees and mountains, and finally even to the sun and moon and the other stars. But if they had done this by that worship which is called latria, serving the creature rather than the Creator, and on this account erring with no small evil of impious superstition, the demons would nonetheless have offered themselves to mock them and to receive what they had thus offered. For those proud and impious spirits are fed not by the odor and smoke, as some vain persons suppose, but by the errors of men:
not by the refreshment of their own body, but by malevolent delight, whenever by any means they deceive, or by the arrogant haughtiness of feigned majesty, when they glory that divine honors are shown to them. Not then did those fathers of ours lay aside only the images of the Gentiles, but, sacrificing nothing either to earth or to any earthly thing, nor to the sea, nor to the sky, nor to the host of heaven, they offered victims to the one God, Creator of all: which victims He willed to be offered to Himself, promising through their likeness the true Victim, through whom He reconciled us to Himself by the remission of sins in Christ Jesus our Lord; whose body — believers being made members of that Head — Paul addresses, saying:
'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God.' But the Manichaeans say that human bodies are the handiwork of the race of darkness, and are prisons in which God, conquered, is shut up: whence Faustus announces one thing, and Paul quite another. But since 'whoever shall preach a gospel to us besides that which you have received, let him be anathema,' Christ speaks truly in Paul; let Manichaeus be anathema in Faustus. He who also says that we have changed nothing of the customs of the Gentiles knows not what he is talking about. For since 'the just man lives by faith,' and 'the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned,' and these three abide for the forming of the life of the faithful — faith, hope, charity:
how then can he have the same customs as another, who does not have these three the same as that other? For whoever believes one thing, hopes for another, loves another, must needs live differently. And if the use of certain things seems to us to be similar with the Gentiles — such as food and drink, dwellings, garments, baths, and, for those of us who lead the married life, the taking and having of wives, the begetting, rearing, and making heirs of children — yet he who refers the use of these things to another end uses them far otherwise, and otherwise he who from these gives thanks to God, concerning whom he believes nothing perverse or false. For even as in your very error you eat of the same bread as other men, and live by fruits and springs,
and are likewise clothed in wool and linen woven in like manner; nor yet in these things do you lead a life like theirs — not by eating or drinking or clothing yourselves differently, but by thinking and believing differently, and by referring all these things to another end, namely the end of your error and vanity: so we too, both in these things and in others which we likewise take, do not live like the Gentiles, referring the same things not to the same end, but to the end of the lawful and divine commandment — charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, from which certain persons, wandering away, have turned aside to empty talk. In which you assuredly hold the primacy, not seeing, not considering, that in the having and doing of the same things it avails so much toward a different life, if the faith be different.
Thus, since your Hearers both have wives and, though unwillingly, beget children, and heap up or guard patrimonies for them, eat flesh, drink wine, wash, reap, gather the vintage, engage in trade, administer public offices, you nevertheless reckon them among yourselves, not with the Gentiles, although their deeds seem more like the Gentiles' than like yours. For, whereas the deeds of certain Gentiles come closer to you than to some of your Hearers — for some in their sacrilegious rites abstain even from wine and from flesh and from intercourse — you rather number among the flock of Manichaeus your Hearers who use all these things, and are in this unlike you, than those who do the same things that you do; and you rather number a woman