How much better it would have been for him, marveling at a new light that arose to put the darkness to flight, to praise it, than to be unable to escape the ancient darkness rushing upon him except by having his own light darkened by it! Wretched, if he was troubled; cruel, if he did it unconcerned. For surely it were better that he should see a good light made by himself than make evil a light begotten of himself: which light he so thrust back against the hostile darkness that it became hostile to him. For this will be charged as a fault to those remnants to be condemned in the mass, that they suffered themselves to stray from their former luminous nature and stood forth as enemies to the holy light: which, before it befell them, if from eternity they did not know that this would come upon them, they suffered eternal darkness of ignorance; but if they did know, eternal darkness of fear.
Behold, truly a part and substance of your god was engaged from eternity in its own darkness, and afterward it did not marvel at a new light, but ran into other alien darkness, which it always feared. Furthermore god himself, whose that part was, if he feared so great an evil about to come upon that part of himself, then the darkness of fear had already seized even himself; but if he did not know that this would come to pass, he was blinded by the darkness of ignorance; and if he knew that it would come upon his part and did not fear it, then the darkness of such cruelty is worse than either that of ignorance or of fear. For your god did not possess that which the Apostle praises even in that very flesh, which you most insanely believe was made not by God but by hyle: 'If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.'
But we do not accuse him: he foreknew, he feared, he grieved, but he had no means to act. In these darknesses of his own misery, therefore, he was engaged from eternity, and afterward he did not marvel at the new light that would put the darkness to flight from him, but he experienced, to the great harm of his own light, other darkness which he always feared. How much better it would have been—I will not say to give a commandment as God, but to receive a commandment as a man—which by keeping he would profit himself and by despising he would harm himself, yet in either motion of the mind he would use free will, rather than to be pressed against his will by an inescapable necessity to the darkening of his own light!
For that indeed would have been by far better: that he should give a commandment to a human nature which he did not know was going to sin, than that, pressed by necessity, he should compel his own divine nature to sin. Wake up and tell us how he conquers the darkness, whom necessity conquers. This was already with him a greater enemy, by whom he was conquered and commanded when he fought with the lesser. How much better it would have been that he should not know where Adam fled from his face, than that he himself should have no place to which to flee—first from the face of a harsh and dreadful necessity, and afterward from the face of a diverse and hostile race!
How much better it would have been for him to begrudge the blessed life to human nature, than to consign his divine nature to misery; to desire the blood and fat of sacrifices, rather than that he himself should so often even be sacrificed to idols, mingled with the fat and blood of all the victims; to be disturbed with jealousy if those sacrifices were offered also to other gods, rather than that he himself, bound not only in all crops but also in all flesh, should be offered to all demons upon all altars!
How much better it would have been for him, moved and troubled with a human indignation, to be angry at those who sin, both his own and others', than that he himself should be troubled in all who are angry, and even in all who fear; that he should be defiled in all who sin, and punished in all who are condemned, bound everywhere by that part of himself which, though innocent, he himself condemned to such disgrace, so that through it he might conquer what he feared—being himself also condemned under so ruinous a necessity—so that his condemned part might be able to forgive him, if, since he is now wretched, he were at least humble!
But now who could endure that God should be reproached by you for being angry at those who sin, his own and others', when the god whom you invent condemns in the mass his own members, which he forced by compulsion to go into the jaws of sin? And indeed when he does this, as you say, he will feel no anger. But I wonder whether he will have the effrontery to bring against them a kind of vengeance, from whom he ought rather to seek pardon and say: 'I beseech you, forgive me; you are my members; when could I have done this to you, except being conquered by necessity? You yourselves also know that then, when I sent you hither, a dreadful enemy had broken out; but that now I bind you here, is because I fear lest he break out again.'
Now surely you yourselves also confess that it is far better to slay thousands of men with temporal death for no fault or a trivial one, than to hand over his own members—that is, the members of God, the substance of God, indeed God Himself—into the abyss of sin, and to condemn them with the everlasting chain of punishment. For if those members had free choice of sinning or of not sinning—although, concerning the substance of God, which is truly the substance of God and therefore altogether unchangeable, no way is found in which this could be said; for God can in no way sin, just as He cannot deny Himself;
but man can sin and deny God, yet if he wills not, he does not do it—if therefore these members of your god, like a human and rational soul, had, as I said, free choice of will to sin or not to sin, they would perhaps rightly be punished for grievous crimes by that torment of the mass. But now you cannot say that those particles had freedom of will, which the whole god himself did not have; because, if he did not send them into sin, he, being wholly invaded by the race of darkness, would be compelled to sin: and if he could not be compelled, then he sinned when he sent them where they could be compelled.
And therefore he himself is rather worthy of that as it were parricide's sack, who did this by free command, than those which by obeying went thither where they lost their free judgment of living rightly. But if he too, being invaded and possessed, could be compelled to sin, unless he had provided for himself first through the disgrace and then through the punishment of his own part, and there was in your god no free will, nor in his parts, let him not feign himself a judge, but let him acknowledge himself a defendant; nor because he suffered what he did not will, but because he pretends to render just recompense by condemning those whom he knows to have suffered evil rather than done it: which he pretends only to this end, that he may not be found conquered—as though it were of any profit to some wretch to be called happy or fortunate.
Surely then even this too was better: that your god should spare neither the righteous nor sinners, men who are neither righteous nor sinners, without any scrutiny of equity—which Faustus, understanding nothing, set forth as the ultimate reproach against our God—than that he should so rage against his own members that it is a small thing that he offered them, inexpiably to be poisoned, to his enemies, unless he also accuse them of the false charge of iniquity. Of them he says, rightly forsooth, that they suffer so monstrous and endless a torment, because they suffered themselves to stray from their former luminous nature and stood forth as enemies to the holy light. Whence, save because, as he himself says, they had become so ingrafted into the primal greed of the princes of darkness that they were unable to recall their own origin and to distinguish themselves from the hostile nature?
Therefore souls of this kind did themselves no evil, but being innocent they only suffered so great an evil. And by whose doing, if not first by his who commanded that they should proceed from himself into so great an evil? They therefore experienced a worse father than an enemy. For the father sent them into so great an evil; but the enemy desired them as a good, wishing to enjoy them, not to harm them: the one knowingly did harm, the other unknowingly. But God, weak and destitute, was unable to counsel himself otherwise—first against the wicked enemy, and afterward against the imprisoned one. At least, then, let him not accuse those by whose obedience he is safe, by whose death he is secure. For if he was compelled to fight, surely he was not also compelled to slander?
For when they suffered themselves to stray from their former luminous nature and stood forth as enemies to the holy light, they were surely compelled to this by the enemy; and if they were unable to resist him, being innocent they are condemned; but if they were able and yet did not will to, why do you still so fabulously bring in a nature of evil, when the origin of sin is from one's own will? For this at any rate they did by their own fault, not by another's force: that, when they could resist the evil, they were unwilling. For if they had done so, they would have done well; but if they did not do so, they would sin gravely and monstrously, if they could and did not. Assuredly they were unwilling. If therefore they were unwilling, it is a crime of the will, not of necessity. From the will, then, is the beginning of sin;
and whence the beginning of sin, thence the beginning of evil, whether of doing against a just precept or of suffering according to a just judgment. Accordingly there is no reason why, in seeking whence evil comes, you should have rushed into so great an evil of this error as to call a nature abounding in so many good things a nature of evil, and to place in the nature of the highest good, before its commingling with the nature of evil, a horrible evil of necessity. For the cause of this error of yours too is pride, which you will not have, if you are unwilling. But you, while you wish somehow to defend that into which you have rushed, take away the origin of sin from the choice of the will and place it in a vain and false fable of a nature of evil.
And by this it remains that you must say that even those souls, to be condemned in the horrible mass with eternal binding, stood forth as enemies to the holy light not by will but by necessity; and that you set up your god as such a judge, before whom you can avail nothing for those whose cause you defend by demonstrating necessity; and such a king, from whom you are unable to obtain pardon for your brothers, the sons and members of him, whose enmities against you and against himself you declare to have arisen not by will but by necessity. O most monstrous cruelty! Except that you turn to his own defense, so that you may excuse him too for doing these things by necessity.
If therefore you could find another judge, who, free from the bond of necessity, existed as a governor of equity, he surely would not fix your god in that mass on the outside, but would shut him up within together with the terrible enemy himself. For why should he not justly be the first to the punishment of condemnation, who is the first to the crime of necessity? How much better, then, would you choose your god in comparison with a worse one.
Not such a one as we worship, but such as you either feign or suppose us to worship—one who, without any scrutiny of equity, without any distinction between condemnation and discipline, would spare among his servants neither the righteous nor the sinner—rather than one who would not spare his own members, whether innocent (if necessity is not a crime), or become guilty by obeying him in their deeds (if necessity too is a crime), so that they should be condemned by him forever, though they ought either to have been absolved together with him, if after the victory freedom breathed again, or to have been condemned together with him, if even after the victory necessity availed at least so much that equity too might avail somewhat.
But just as you fabricate a god—not that true and highest one whom we worship, but some other false one, I know not what, whom you either imagine or slanderously say we worship, who nevertheless is himself far better than your god—for both do not exist and both are fabricated by you, but you fabricate a better one, whom you accuse as ours, than the one whom you adore as yours: so also you disparage the patriarchs and prophets, not such as they are honored by us, but such as, not understanding our books, you have fabricated with malevolent vanity: whom nevertheless, even such as you suspect them to have been, it is too little for me to say that they are to be preferred to your Elect who keep all the commandments of Manichaeus, unless I also show that they are better than your very god.
This I will not attempt to demonstrate, unless first, with the Lord aiding me against carnal hearts, I have by manifest reasoning defended our holy fathers, the patriarchs and prophets, from your accusations. And to you indeed, O Manichaeans, it would suffice to answer thus: that we might teach that even the vices which you suppose in our men are to be preferred to the praises of yours, adding to the heap of your confusion, so that even your god might be found far worse than the men whom you boast our fathers to have been. Thus, then, as I said, it would suffice to answer you.
But since some, even apart from your empty babblings, are moved of their own accord, comparing the life of the prophets in the Old Testament with the life of the apostles in the New Testament, and unable to distinguish the custom of that time, in which the promise was veiled, from the custom of this time, in which the promise is revealed, I am compelled rather to answer those who either dare to prefer their own temperance to the prophets, or seek patronage for their own wickedness from the prophets. In this matter I say first that of those men not only the tongue but even the life was prophetic, and that the whole of that kingdom of the Hebrew nation was a certain great prophet, because it was of a certain great one.
Wherefore, as regards those who were there instructed in heart in the wisdom of God—not only in the things which they said, but even in the things which they did—and as regards the rest and, together, all the men of that nation, in the things which were divinely done in them or concerning them, the prophecy of Christ who was to come and of the Church is to be searched out. For all those things, as the Apostle says, were figures of us.
But these men, in certain deeds from whose loftiness they are far removed, find fault as it were with the lust of the prophets, just as some sacrilegious pagans also find fault as it were with the folly, or rather as it were with the madness, of Christ, because at a time of year not suitable He sought fruit on a tree, or as with the affectation of a certain childish foolishness, because with head bowed He wrote with His finger on the ground, and, when He had answered the men questioning Him, began again to do this. For they have no understanding nor do they perceive that in great souls certain virtues are most similar to the vices of small souls in some appearance, but with no comparison of equity.
但那些在偉人身上指摘這些事的人，就像學校裏無知的孩童，他們把「單數的動詞當配單數的名詞」學為一件大事，就指摘拉丁語最博學的作家，因為他說「一部分把牠們切成碎塊」（他們說他該說『切』〔單數〕）；又因為他們知道 religion 是這樣拼寫，就責備他把字母 l 重疊寫作「列祖的 relligion」。由此或許不無道理地可以按其類別說：博學者的修辭格與音變，與不通者的文法錯誤和野蠻語相距多遠，先知那預表性的行為，與惡人淫亂的罪惡也相距多遠。
But those who find fault with these things in great men are like ignorant boys in school, who, when they have learned as a great matter that a verb of singular number is to be rendered to a noun of singular number, find fault with the most learned author of the Latin language because he said 'a part cut them into pieces' (they say he ought to have said 'cuts'); and because they know that 'religion' is spelled, they blame him because with the letter 'l' doubled he said 'the religion of the fathers.' Whence perhaps it may not absurdly be said, in its own kind, that as far as the figures and metaplasms of the learned are distant from the solecisms and barbarisms of the unskilled, so far are the figurative deeds of the prophets distant from the lustful sins of the wicked.
And by this, just as a boy reproved for a barbarism, if he should wish to defend himself by Virgil's metaplasm, would be beaten with rods, so whoever, having wallowed with his own wife's maidservant, should take up as an example for his defense Abraham's deed, in that he begat offspring of Hagar, would that he be corrected not indeed with rods, but at least with cudgels, lest with the rest of the adulterers he be punished with eternal torment. Those matters indeed are trifling, but these are great; nor is the likeness drawn from thence to this end, that the figure of speech should be equated with the sacrament and the solecism with the adultery.
Nevertheless, in the proportion of each one's own kind, what skill or lack of skill avails in those certain virtues or vices of speech, that same wisdom or folly avails in these virtues or vices of conduct, though in a far different kind. Wherefore, lest in matters to be praised or blamed.
—to be accused or defended, to be restrained or relaxed, to be condemned or absolved, to be sought after or avoided—we rush rashly, in all which matters sins or things rightly done are concerned, we ought first to consider what sin is, then afterward to examine the deeds of the saints recorded in the divine books, so that, if we should find any sins even of theirs, we may see by diligent reasoning, as far as we can, for what usefulness these too were committed to writing and consigned to memory.
But those things which we find seem to the foolish or malevolent to be sins, which are not, and yet in which no examples of virtues stand out, let us also consider these, for what cause they were inserted into those writings which we wholesomely believe were composed for the benefit of governing the present life and of attaining the future. Moreover, whatever proofs of righteousness shine forth in the deeds of the saints, no one, not even of the unskilled, doubts that they ought to have been written down.
Concerning those things, therefore, there can be a question, which may seem either to have been written in vain, if they appear neither rightly done nor to be sins, or even perniciously, if they are convicted of being sins, lest they avail toward imitation—whether in the books themselves they are not reproved, and therefore may even be thought not to be sins, or whether there too they are reproved, but are committed under an easy hope of pardon, because they are found even in the saints. A sin, therefore, is something done or said or desired against the eternal law. But the eternal law is the divine reason or the will of God, commanding that the natural order be preserved and forbidding that it be disturbed. What, then, the natural order in man may be, must be inquired.
For man consists of soul and body; but so also does the beast. Yet to no one is it doubtful that the soul is to be preferred to the body by the natural order. But in the soul of man there is reason, which is not in the beast. Accordingly, just as the soul is preferred to the body, so the reason of the soul itself is preferred by the law of nature to its other parts, which the beasts also have; and in the reason itself, which is partly contemplative, partly active, without doubt contemplation excels. For in this too is the image of God, by which through faith we are reformed to His likeness.
And so rational action ought to obey rational contemplation, whether that which works through faith, such as it is, so long as we are pilgrims away from the Lord, or that which is through sight, which will be when we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is—being made equal even in the spiritual body, by His grace, to His angels, having received the first robe of immortality and incorruption, with which this our mortal and corruptible shall be clothed, that death may be swallowed up in victory, righteousness being made perfect through grace; because the holy and sublime angels also have their contemplation and their action. For they command themselves to do that which He whom they contemplate commands, by whose eternal command they serve freely, because sweetly;
but we, whose body is dead because of sin, before God quickens even our mortal bodies through His Spirit dwelling in us, according to the measure of our infirmity, according to the eternal law by which the natural order is preserved, live justly if we live by faith unfeigned, which works through love, having in a good conscience the hope laid up in heaven of immortality and incorruption and of that very righteousness to be perfected, even to a certain ineffably most sweet satiety, which in this pilgrimage must be hungered and thirsted for, so long as we walk by faith, not by sight.
Wherefore man's action, serving faith which serves God, curbs all mortal delights and restrains them to the natural measure, preferring the better things to the inferior by an ordered love. For if nothing unlawful gave delight, no one would sin. He sins, therefore, who relaxes rather than curbs the delight of the unlawful. But that is unlawful which that law forbids, by which the natural order is preserved. But whether there is any rational creature which nothing unlawful can delight, is a great question.
But if there is, man was not made in that kind, nor that angelic nature which did not stand in the truth; but in that kind these rational beings were made, so that there should be in them the possibility of curbing delight from the unlawful, which by not curbing they sinned. Great therefore is the human creature also, since through it that possibility is restored, through which, if it had willed, it would not even have fallen. Great therefore is the Lord and greatly to be praised, who founded it. For He founded also inferior creatures, which cannot sin; He founded also better ones, which will not to sin. For the bestial nature does not sin, because it does nothing against the eternal law, to which it is so subject that it cannot be a partaker of it.
Again, the sublime angelic nature does not sin, because it partakes of the eternal law in such a way that God alone delights it, to whose will it submits without any trial of temptation. But as for man, whose life upon the earth is a temptation because of sin, let him subject to himself what he has in common with the beasts, and let him subject to God what he has in common with the angels, until, by righteousness and immortality made perfect and received, he is exalted above the former and made equal to the latter. Mortal delights, meanwhile, are to be either stirred up or relaxed only so far as to restore or to guard this mortal well-being, whether of each individual man or of the human race itself.
But if beyond this they fall into ruin, and, against the rule of temperance, sweep away a man who does not govern himself, then these desires will assuredly be unlawful and shameful, and worthy to be corrected by sufferings. But if they should even plunge the ruler himself, thrown into confusion, into so great a whirlpool of depraved habit that either, believing them to be beyond punishment, he neglects the medicine of confession and penitence by which, corrected, he might emerge; or, by the worse death of the heart, against that eternal law of providence he brings forward a blasphemous patronage in their defence, and so ends his last day worthy no longer of correction but of damnation—then that irreproachable law judges him so.
Having therefore consulted the eternal law, which commands that the natural order be preserved and forbids that it be disturbed, let us see what father Abraham sinned—that is, what he did against this law—in those things which Faustus has cast up against him as though they were great crimes. He says: 'Burning with an insane craving to have offspring, and by no means believing God, who had already promised this to him concerning his wife Sarah, he wallowed with a concubine.' But this Faustus, blinded by an insane lust to accuse, both betrayed the wickedness of his own heresy and, in ignorance and error, praised Abraham's union.
For just as that eternal law—that is, the will of God, the Founder of all creatures—in providing for the preservation of the natural order permits the pleasure of mortal flesh in intercourse to be relaxed under the dominion of reason, not that lust may be gratified but that the welfare of the race may be secured, and only for the propagating of offspring: so, on the contrary, the perverse law of the Manichaeans, lest their god (whom they bewail as bound in all seeds) be more tightly bound in the conception of a woman, commands that offspring above all be avoided by those who lie together, so that their god may rather be poured out in a filthy discharge than be fettered in a cruel bond. Not therefore did Abraham burn with an insane craving to have offspring, but the Manichaean raved with an insane folly to avoid offspring.
Accordingly, the one, preserving the order of nature, did nothing in human intercourse except that a man might be born; the other, observing the perversity of his fable, feared nothing in any intercourse except that his god might be taken captive. But where Faustus, in the deed of Abraham, blames as it were the complicity of the wife, there indeed with an evil mind and an intention to disparage, yet unknowingly and unwillingly, he praises them both. For she did not mingle her own conscience with any wickedness of her husband, whereby he might gratify his lust with base and unlawful pleasure; but she too, by the natural order, wishing sons and knowing herself barren, laid claim by lawful power to the fruitfulness of her handmaid's womb for the use of her own right—not yielding to a man who desired, but commanding a man who obeyed.
Nor was this from disordered pride; for who does not know that a wife ought to serve her husband as her lord? But as regards the members of the body by which sex itself is distinguished, the Apostle says: 'Likewise the husband also has not power over his own body, but the wife'—so that whereas in the other acts pertaining to human peace the woman owes servitude to the man, in this one matter alone, by which the carnal lot of the two sexes is distinguished and by carnal union is joined, the husband over the wife and the wife over the husband have a like power over each other. Offspring therefore, which Sarah could not have of herself, she wished to have of her handmaid—yet from that same seed from which she too ought to have had them of herself, if she had been able.
Never would a woman do this if she were held by carnal lust for her husband's body; for she would rather be jealous of the concubine than make her a mother. But as it was, for this very reason the will to propagate in this way was pious, because the will to lie together was not lustful. That, indeed, cannot be defended—if Abraham, as Faustus objected, by no means believing God, who had already promised him offspring of Sarah, wished to receive offspring of Hagar. But this is most manifestly false; God had not yet promised this. Let those who wish examine the earlier passages of that Scripture, and they will find that the land and an abundance of an innumerable multitude had already been promised to Abraham's seed.
Yet it had not yet been made plain how the propagation of that seed was to be—whether from Abraham's flesh, if he himself begot of himself; or from choice, if perchance he should adopt someone; and then, if of his own flesh, whether from Sarah or from some other altogether—this had not yet been made manifest. Let them read, I say, who wish, and they will find Faustus either imprudently deceived or impudently deceiving. And so Abraham, seeing that sons were not being born to him, and yet holding fast the promise made to his seed, thought first of adoption. This is shown by the fact that, speaking with God, he says of his home-born servant: 'This shall be my heir'—as though he said: 'Since you have not given me seed of myself, fulfil in this man what you promised to my seed.'
For if no one's seed were called such except what is born of his flesh, neither would the Apostle call us the seed of Abraham—we who certainly do not derive our origin of flesh from him, but who, by the imitation of faith, have been made his seed, believing in Christ, whose flesh was propagated from Abraham's flesh. At that time, then, Abraham heard from the Lord: 'This shall not be your heir; but he who shall come forth from your loins, he shall be your heir.' Already then, the thought of adoption being removed, when Abraham hoped for seed of himself, it remained uncertain whether it should be from Sarah or from another—which God willed to hide from him, until first, from the handmaid, the Old Testament should be prefigured.