Better indeed that she should remain without children than that she should become a mother without the right of matrimony; yet with a far different intention did she sin in providing her father-in-law as a father for her own children, than if she had desired him for herself as an adulterer. Finally, when by his command she was being led out to death, and she produced the staff, the necklace, and the ring, saying that she had been made pregnant by him whose those pledges were, then, when he recognized what he had given, he answered that she had been justified more than he, because he had refused to join his son to her as husband, by which abandonment she had been compelled to seek posterity in that manner rather than in no manner, and from no other source than from that same stock.
In this verdict, saying that she was not justified, but rather more justified than he, he did not praise her, but in comparison with himself preferred her—that is, judging her desire to have offspring, by which she had placed herself under her father-in-law, to be less blameworthy than the ardour of lustful intercourse, by which he, overcome as though toward a harlot, had gone in. It is as is said to certain people: 'You have justified Sodom'—that is, you have so sinned that Sodom, compared with you, seems righteous.
And yet, even if this woman were understood to be, not less blameworthy by comparison with a worse deed, but altogether praised by her father-in-law—she who nonetheless, by that eternal law of justice which forbids the natural order to be disturbed (not only of bodies, but chiefly and firstly of souls) to be disturbed, is deservedly found blameworthy because she did not keep the ordained fellowship in the begetting of children—what wonder is it if a sinful woman is praised by a sinful man? This Faustus, or rather Manichaean perversity itself, thinks to be against us, as though it were necessary for us, in venerating and worthily proclaiming that Scripture, to approve the vices of men which it records;
whereas on the contrary it is necessary that, the more religiously we receive that Scripture, the more confidently we blame those things which, through its own truth, we have learned more certainly ought to be blamed. For there fornication and every unlawful intercourse is condemned by divine right. And by this, when it records such deeds of certain men, concerning which in that place it keeps silent its own sentence, it leaves them to us to be judged, it does not prescribe them to be praised. For which of us does not, in the Gospel itself, detest the cruelty of Herod, when, anxious about the birth of Christ, he ordered so many infants to be slain? Yet this deed is not there censured, but only narrated.
But lest the Manichaeans in their raving impudence contend that this is false—since they even deny that very birth of Christ by which Herod was troubled—let them read the savagery and blindness of the Jews themselves, how there it is only narrated, not censured, and yet is detested by all. 'But,' they say, 'this Judah, who lay with his daughter-in-law, is counted among the twelve patriarchs.' And what of it? Was not that other Judas too, who betrayed the Lord, numbered among the twelve apostles, and was he not, one of them, along with them, sent as a devil to preach the Gospel? But still they answer and say: he, after such a crime, was destroyed by his own noose and removed from the number of the apostles;
but this one, after such shamefulness, was among his brothers especially blessed and praised above all by that father to whom God bears so great a testimony. Nay rather, from this it appears more expressly that that prophecy pertains not to him, but to Christ, who was foretold as coming in the flesh from his tribe; and therefore the divine Scripture ought all the more not to be silent about his disgrace—as indeed it was not silent—so that in the words of his father, by which he is thus praised after that disgrace, since he himself is not recognized, another may be sought.
Although Faustus is to be understood as having wished to bite with his slanderous tooth at this very thing—that Christ is proclaimed by us as having come from Judah's tribe—especially because in the generations of His fathers which the evangelist Matthew records, Zerah too is found, whom Tamar herself bore from that conception. For if he wished to reproach the stock of Jacob, not the generation of Christ, he had rather Reuben the firstborn, who defiled his father's bed with wicked lust—such fornication as the Apostle says is not heard of even among the Gentiles. Which deed even Jacob the father himself, when he blessed them, did not keep silent, accusing and detesting it over his head.
This crime, then, Faustus would rather have thrown up—where there appears not an error arising from a harlot's garb, but an altogether willful defilement of the father's couch—had he not both hated Tamar the more, because in that intercourse she desired nothing other than to bear a child, than if she had burned with lust of carnal pleasure alone, and had he not wished, by blaming the ancestors of Christ, to derogate from faith in His incarnation—not knowing, wretched man, that the most true and most truthful Saviour was a teacher not only by speaking but even by being born. For His faithful ones, who were to come from all nations, ought to learn even from the example of His own flesh that the iniquities of their parents cannot harm them.
Accordingly that Bridegroom, in keeping with His own guests—He who was to call both the good and the bad to the wedding—willed also to be born of the good and the bad, so that He might confirm that the prophecy of the Passover, by which it was commanded that the lamb be eaten, taken from sheep and from goats, as though from the just and the unjust, had gone before to prefigure Himself. For everywhere preserving the tokens of God and of man, He did not spurn parents both good and bad because of the fitness of His humanity, but chose the birth from a virgin because of the miracle of His divinity. In vain therefore does Faustus, raging rather against himself with a sacrilegious tooth, accuse the holy Scripture which the whole world now deservedly venerates—Scripture which, as I said above, like the sheen of a faithful mirror, has taken up no person to be flattered.
But it both judges the praiseworthy and blameworthy deeds of men, and sets them before readers to be judged, not only intimating the men themselves as either blameworthy or praiseworthy, but also not keeping silent about certain things praiseworthy in the blameworthy and blameworthy in the praiseworthy. For not because Saul was a blameworthy man is that deed of his therefore not praiseworthy—that he so diligently investigated the tasting of what was under the ban, and so severely tried to punish it, obeying God who had forbidden this to be done, or that he abolished the pythons and ventriloquists from his kingdom; nor, because David was praiseworthy, are his sins therefore, which God also reproved through the prophet, to be approved or imitated.
Just as in Pontius Pilate that is not to be censured, that he judged the innocent Lord against the accusations of the Jews, nor in Peter is that to be praised, that he thrice denied the same Lord, or that whereby he was called Satan by Him, because, not understanding the things that are of God, he wished to recall Him from the Passion, that is, from our salvation—so, called blessed a little before, a little after he is called Satan. But what he obtained in that man, his apostolate and the crown of his martyrdom bear witness. Thus therefore we also read the sins of king David, but we read also his rightly-done deeds.
But in what he prevailed, or whence he conquered anything, is sufficiently plain—not to the malevolent blindness with which Faustus rushed upon the holy books and men, but to religious prudence, by which both divine authority and human merits can be discerned and distinguished. For let these men read and see that in David God reproved more things than did Faustus; but there too is the sacrifice of penitence, there too is that incomparable meekness even toward the most savage and atrocious enemy, who, as often as he was given into David's mightiest hands, so often was let go from those most merciful hands unharmed.
There is that memorable humility under the scourge of God, and the royal neck so subjected to the Lord's yoke that, armed and accompanied by armed men, he most patiently bore bitter reproaches from an enemy's mouth, and most modestly restrained his own companion, inflamed with wrath because his king heard such things and was already even now advancing with avenging right hand upon the reviler's head—adding to his royal command the weight of divine fear, and saying that this was rendered to his own deserts by the judgment on high, whereby that insulter had been sent to hurl such reproaches upon him.
There is toward the flock committed to him such pastoral love that he himself wished to die for them, when, the people having been numbered, it pleased God so to punish the sin of his self-exaltation that He diminished that same number by the death of many—by whose multitude the king's heart had been tempted with pride: wherein, by a hidden judgment, God, with whom there is no iniquity, both withdrew from this life those whom He knew unworthy of this life, and, in that man who had exalted himself over the abundance of men, healed the swelling of the human soul by the diminution of that same abundance.
There such a religious fear of God preserved the sacrament of Christ in the holy anointing, that his heart trembled with pious anxiety when he secretly cut off a little piece from Saul's own garment, that he might have wherewith to give him proof how unwilling he was to kill him when he could have done so.
There such prudence toward his sons and such clemency, that although he did not mourn for the innocent child (for whom, when it was sick, casting himself down with many tears and in the filth of humility, he had entreated the Lord) once it was dead, yet that same young man, his son, headlong in parricidal frenzy—who had both defiled his father's bed with wicked debaucheries and was waging a wicked war against his father—he both wished to be preserved and wept when he was slain: foreseeing, namely, the everlasting punishments of a soul enwrapped in such great crimes, to escape which he desired that man, humbled, to live and to be corrected through penitence.
These and many other things praiseworthy and worthy of imitation are found in that holy man, if only a perverse mind does not scrutinize that Scripture which speaks of him—especially if with a mind submissive and pious and plainly faithful we follow the sentence of God, who knew the secrets of his heart, wherein, in the sight of Him who cannot be deceived, it so pleased that he was even set forth by Him to be imitated by his own sons. For what else than the depths of his heart was the Spirit of God discerning, when, rebuked through the prophet, he said 'I have sinned,' and forthwith, at this one word, deserved to hear that he had received pardon? Unto what end, if not unto everlasting salvation?
For the discipline of the paternal scourge, according to God's threat, was not omitted in him, so that both, having confessed, he might be delivered forever, and, afflicted, he might be tried temporally. And it was no mean strength of faith, nor small a sign of a meek and obedient mind, that when he had heard from the prophet that God had forgiven him, and yet the things which had been threatened consequently came to pass, he did not say that he had been deceived by the prophet's lie, nor murmur against God, as though He had pronounced a false pardon of his sins. For that deeply holy man understood, lifting up his soul not against God but to God, that unless the Lord were propitious to the confessing and penitent, how much of eternal punishments his sins deserved;
and that, being burned for these with temporal corrections, he saw that toward him both pardon remained and the medicine was not neglected. But why did Saul, rebuked through Samuel, when he too said 'I have sinned,' not deserve to hear what David did, that the Lord had forgiven him? Is there acceptance of persons with God? Far be it. But in a similar utterance, which the human sense heard, the heart was dissimilar, which the divine eye discerned. What are we taught by such examples, except that the kingdom of heaven is within us, and that we ought to worship God from our inmost being, so that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth may speak—not, however, that like the people we should honour Him with our lips, while their heart is far from Him—nor should we dare to judge otherwise concerning men,
whose inner parts we cannot see, as God can, who can do this and cannot be deceived or corrupted—whose most evident sentence concerning David, since the Scripture of such sublime authority contains it, human rashness that thinks otherwise is much to be laughed at, or rather to be lamented. For those divine books are to be believed concerning the ancient men, who foretold things so far off in the future, which are now seen as present. What else do we learn in the Gospel, when the same voice of Peter is heard confessing Christ the Son of God, as also demons uttered equal words, but with a heart far unequal? Accordingly, in a similar voice the faith of Peter is praised, the uncleanness of demons is restrained—by whom, if not by Him who, not with a human ear,
but with a divine mind, knew how to inspect the inner roots of those voices and to discern them without any falsity? For how many other men also say that Christ is the Son of the living God, and yet are not compared to the merits of Peter—not only those who are going to say in that day, 'Lord, Lord,' and to hear, 'Depart from me,' but even those who will be set apart at the right hand, among whom very many neither ever even once denied Christ, nor disapproved of His Passion for our salvation, nor compelled the Gentiles to judaize, and yet will appear unequal to Peter, who did these things, sitting on twelve thrones and judging not only the twelve tribes but even the angels?
So also many, coveting no one's wife, pursuing no husband of a coveted woman even to the death, yet cannot have before God the Davidic merit, when that man had done those things. So great is the difference in what displeases each man in himself and how much, so that it may be utterly rooted out, and what fruitful and rich thing rises up in its place with immense fertility—for husbandmen too are more pleased by fields which, even after great thorns have been rooted out, yield a hundredfold, than by those which never had any thorns and scarcely reach thirtyfold.
So too Moses, God's most faithful servant in all His house, minister of the holy law and of the commandment that is holy, just, and good, to whom the Apostle bears witness—for these are his words which I have cited—minister also of the sacraments, which did not yet bestow salvation but as yet promised the Saviour, which the Saviour Himself also confirms, saying: 'If you had believed Moses, you would believe me also;
for he wrote of me'—whence in its own place, as far as seemed sufficient, we have discoursed against the shameless calumnies of the Manichaeans—this Moses, then, the servant of the living God, the true God, the most high God, the fashioner of heaven and earth, not out of another's material but out of nothing, not compelled by necessity but overflowing with goodness, not by the suffering of any member of His own but by the power of His own Word—this Moses, I say, humble in refusing so great a ministry, submissive in undertaking it, faithful in keeping it, vigorous in executing it, watchful in ruling the people, vehement in correcting, ardent in loving, patient in enduring—who, for those over whom he presided, interposed himself before God when He was consulting, opposed himself before God when He was angry:
this man, therefore, so great and such a man—far be it from us that we should weigh him from the slanderous mouth of Faustus, but from the mouth plainly of the truth-telling God, who truly knew the man whom He had made, since He recognizes even the sins of men, which He Himself does not commit, both in those who deny them as a Judge, and in those who confess them as a Father, He forgives. Altogether from His mouth do we both love and admire and, as far as we can, imitate Moses His servant, though we are far inferior to his merits, even with no Egyptian either slain or despoiled, no war waged—things which he did, the one from the disposition of a future defender, the other by the empire imposed by God.
To pass over for the moment the fact that, when he had struck the Egyptian—although God had not commanded him—yet in a prophetic persona it was divinely permitted to be done for this end, that it might presignify something future (whereof I do not now treat, but discuss those deeds altogether as though they signified nothing, and, having consulted that eternal law, I find that a man ought not to have been killed by one who bore no ordained power, however injurious and wicked that man was). Nevertheless souls capable of virtue and fruitful often send ahead vices, whereby they indicate to which virtue they are most fittingly suited, if they should be cultivated by precepts.
For just as husbandmen, when they have seen land which, though useless, nonetheless brings forth huge weeds, declare it fit for grain; and where they have caught sight of fern, though they know it must be rooted out, they perceive it suited for sturdy vines; and the mountain which they have seen growing wild with oleasters, they do not doubt to be useful for olives once cultivation is applied—so that motion of the mind, whereby Moses did not endure that a foreign brother, suffering wrong from a wicked citizen, should be unavenged, though the order of power was not observed, was not useless in the fruits of virtues, but, still uncultivated, was pouring forth signs indeed vicious, yet of great fertility.
He Himself finally, through His angel, called forth Moses with divine voices on Mount Sinai, through whom the people of Israel might be delivered from Egypt, and prepared him by the miracle of the vision in the bush that flamed and yet was not consumed, and by the Lord's words, unto the fruit of obedience—He who also called Saul from heaven when he was persecuting the Church, laid him low, raised him up, filled him: as it were struck him, pruned him, engrafted him, made him fruitful. For that savagery of Paul, when according to zeal for the traditions of his fathers he was persecuting the Church, thinking he was doing service to God, was as it were a wild vice, but a sign of great fruitfulness. Hence too was that deed of Peter, when, with drawn sword, wishing to defend the Lord, he cut off the ear of the persecutor:
which deed the Lord restrained rather threateningly, saying: 'Put up the sword; for whoever has used the sword shall fall by the sword.' But he uses the sword who, by no higher and lawful power either commanding or permitting, is armed for the blood of someone. For assuredly the Lord had commanded that His disciples should carry iron, but He had not commanded that they should strike. What then is incongruous, if Peter, after this sin, was made shepherd of the Church, just as Moses, after striking the Egyptian, was made ruler of that synagogue? For each exceeded the rule of justice, not by detestable savagery, but by a correctable animosity—each out of hatred of another's wickedness, but the one from brotherly, the other from lordly, though still carnal, love, sinned.
This vice was to be cut back or rooted out; but nonetheless so great a heart was to be cultivated, like earth, for the bearing of fruits, that is, of virtues. What then does Faustus now object concerning the Egyptians despoiled, not knowing what he says? In doing which Moses so far did not sin, that he would have sinned by not doing it. For God had commanded—He who assuredly knows not only according to deeds, but even according to the heart of man, what each one ought to suffer, or through whom. Carnal, then, was that people as yet, and occupied with desire of earthly things, but the Egyptians were sacrilegious and unjust;
for even with that gold, that is, God's creature, using it ill to the Creator's injury, they served their own idols, and they had unjustly and violently afflicted foreign men with unpaid labour. Worthy therefore were both these, to whom such things were commanded, and those, who would suffer such things. And perhaps according to their own wills and thoughts the Hebrews were permitted rather than commanded to do these things; but God willed His permission to be made known to them through His servant Moses, when He commanded him to speak. It may be, however, that there are other most hidden causes why this was said by God to that people; but to divine commands we must yield by obeying, not resist by disputing. The Apostle said: 'For who has known the mind of the Lord?
or who has been His counsellor?' Whether therefore this be the cause which I have said, or whatever other cause lies hidden in the secret and abstruse disposition of God why He said this through Moses to that people—that they should ask of the Egyptians for their own use things which they would carry away—this nonetheless I affirm, that it was said neither in vain nor unjustly, and that Moses was not permitted to do otherwise than God had said, so that with the Lord rested the counsel of commanding, but with the servant the obedience of carrying it out. 'But God,' he says, 'the true and good, is by no means to be believed to have commanded such things.' Nay rather, He rightly does not command such things—unless it be the true and good God, who alone knows what is to be commanded to each, and alone permits no one to suffer anything incongruous.
For the rest, let that unskilled and false goodness of the human heart contradict even Christ, lest at the bidding of the good God the wicked should suffer some evil, when He is going to say to the angels: 'Gather first the tares and bind them in bundles to be burned.' Yet He forbade the servants who wished to do this very thing unseasonably, saying: 'Lest perhaps, while you wish to gather the tares, you root up together with them the wheat also.' Thus the true and good God alone knows what, when, to whom, and through whom He either commands or permits anything to be done.
Moreover, that human quality — not goodness but plainly vanity — was able to contradict this same Lord, when, at the harmful desire of the demons who wished and begged to enter into the swine, He permitted it; and this especially because the Manichaeans believed that not only swine but also small and lowly animals possessed the souls of men. Yet this vanity being disproved and cast aside, this nonetheless stands firm: that our Lord Christ, the Lord of the laws, the only Son of God and therefore the true and good God, granted, at the desire of the demons, the death of another man's cattle, the destruction of animals of whatever sort, and grievous loss to men. But who could be so utterly mad as to say that He could not have shut them out from men, even if He had not been willing to grant to their harmful will so much as the destruction of the swine?
Furthermore, if the desire of condemned spirits — already destined for eternal fire — however savage and unjust, was loosed by the Creator and Orderer of all natures, by a governance indeed hidden yet everywhere just, into that toward which it had inclined itself, what is absurd in this: that the Egyptians, men unjustly lording it over free men, deserved to be stripped of earthly goods by the Hebrews — goods of which they were even debtors as wages for the Hebrews' so harsh and unjust labors, and which they were moreover using in sacrilegious rite to the injury of the Creator? Yet if Moses had commanded this of his own accord, or the Hebrews had done it of their own accord, they would assuredly have sinned;
although perhaps they did sin — not indeed by doing what God had either commanded or permitted, but by desiring such things. But that they were permitted to do this by divine dispensation, they were permitted by His just and good judgment, who knows how both to restrain the wicked by punishments and to instruct the subject, to give stronger precepts to the sounder and to appoint medicinal degrees for the weaker. Moses, however, is to be charged neither with covetousness in those desired goods nor with defiance in despising any divine commands.
For that eternal law, which commands that the natural order be preserved and forbids that it be disturbed, has set certain deeds in a kind of middle place for men, so that in usurping them audacity is deservedly reproved, but in carrying them out obedience is rightly praised. So great is the difference in the natural order as to what is done by whom, and under whom each one acts. If Abraham had immolated his son of his own accord, what would he have appeared but horrible and insane? Yet at God's command, what but faithful and devoted?
This the very Truth so loudly proclaims that Faustus, deterred by its voice, though against Abraham himself he sought with tooth and nail for something to say, even reaching the point of slanderous falsehood, yet did not dare to reprove this deed — unless perhaps a deed so noble did not come into his mind, a deed which offers itself even unread and unsought to the soul, and which, sung at last in so many tongues and painted in so many places, strikes even ears and eyes that would feign not to notice. Wherefore, if in the slaying of his son a spontaneous impulse is found execrable, but at God's command a compliant service is found not only blameless but even praiseworthy, why, Faustus, do you reprove Moses for despoiling the Egyptians?
If the seeming wickedness of one acting humanly provokes you, let the divine authority of the One commanding strike you with awe. Or are you prepared to censure even God Himself for willing such things to be done? Get back, then, Satan; for you savor not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men. And would that you had been worthy to hear this as Peter did, and that afterward you might have preached that which, with feeble sense, you reprove in God — just as he afterward proclaimed to the nations with glorious heralding that which at first, when the Lord willed it to come to pass, had displeased him. Wherefore, if human hardness now at last understands, and a will crooked and perverse even in right matters, that it makes the greatest difference whether something is admitted out of human desire or rashness,
or whether obedience is rendered to the command of God, who knows what, when, and to whom He permits or commands, and what it is fitting for each to do and to suffer — then let it neither wonder at nor shudder over the wars waged through Moses. For in them too he was not raging but obeying, in following the divine commands; nor was God raging when He commanded these things, but repaying the worthy with what was worthy and terrifying those who deserved terror. For what is blamed in war? Is it that men die who will one day die anyway, in order that those destined to live in peace may be subdued? To reprove this is the mark of the timid, not of the religious.
The desire of doing harm, the cruelty of revenge, an unappeased and implacable spirit, the savagery of rebellion, the lust of domination, and whatever like these — these are the things that are rightly blamed in wars. These, most often that they too may be justly punished, are the wars that good men undertake against the violence of those who resist, at the command either of God or of some lawful authority, when they find themselves in that order of human affairs where the order itself justly constrains them either to command such a thing or to obey in such matters. Otherwise, when the soldiers came to John to be baptized, saying, 'And we, what shall we do?' he would have answered them: throw down your arms, desert this military service, strike no one, wound none, cast none down;