Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani

On the text: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” as far as the text: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” The utterly foolish Manichaeans think that this chapter of the law is opposed to the gospel. They say that in Genesis it is written that God made heaven and earth and light by himself, but in the gospel it is written that the world was fashioned through our Lord Jesus Christ, where it is said: “And the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.” They are refuted in three ways. First, because when it is said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” the Christian understands the Trinity itself there, in which not the Father alone but also the Son and the Holy Spirit is understood. For we do not believe in three gods but in one God: Father and Son and Holy Spirit, although the Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. It would take too long to discuss this unity of the Trinity here. Second, because where it is said, “God said, ‘Let it be,’ and it was made,” there it must be understood that he made what he made through the Word. But the Word of the Father is the Son. So this chapter of Genesis, where it is written, “And God said, ‘Let it be,’ and it was made,” is not in conflict with that passage of the gospel where it is said, “And the world was made through him,” that is, through our Lord, because he is the Word of the Father, through whom all things were made. Finally, if the Son is not to be understood in Genesis because it is not said that God made things through the Son, then neither in the gospel does God feed the birds and clothe the lilies through the Son, along with countless other things that the Lord himself says God the Father does, although he does not say that he does them through the Son. They also add the testimony of the apostle, where he says of our Lord Jesus Christ: “He is the firstborn of all creation, and all things were made through him in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible,” and they say that this chapter too is opposed to Genesis, where God is said to have made the world in such a way that the Son is not named there specifically. They are badly mistaken; they do not see that, if this were so, the apostle himself would contradict himself, since in another place he says of the One: “from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things,” and does not name the Son. But just as the Son is not named here and yet is understood, so also in Genesis; and just as these two chapters of Paul are not opposed to each other, so neither is Genesis opposed to the gospel.

On the text: “And God finished on the sixth day all his works that he had made, and on the seventh he rested from all those works of his that he had made.” The Manichaeans also raise a false charge against this passage, and say that what is written in Genesis, that God rested on the seventh day from all his works that he made, is opposed to the New Testament, since the Lord says in the gospel: “My Father is working until now.” This is in no way contradictory. For the Lord was refuting the error of the Jews, who thought that God rested on the seventh day in such a way that from then on he did nothing at all. But he rested from all his works that he made, so that he would no longer make the world with all that is in it, yet not so as to rest also from governing the world. For it is not written, “God rested from all works,” so as not to work thereafter; rather it is written, “God rested from all his works that he made,” so that from then on he would work not in making the world, a work from which he had ceased after it was completed, but in governing it, the work in which the Lord made known that he is engaged. Nor does that rest mean that God sought a pause after labor, but that he ceased from establishing the natures of things once those things were complete, although he still works until now in governing them. The Jews did not understand the observance of the Sabbath; they thought that one must cease even from the works that serve people's well-being. That is why the Lord refuted them in other places too with a wonderful comparison: the sheep that fell into a pit, and the beast of burden that must be untied to be led to water. The Sabbath was not rejected but understood: among Christians it has ceased to be observed in a fleshly way, but it is kept spiritually by the saints, who understand the voice of the Lord calling them to rest and saying: “Come to me, you who labor, and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is gentle and my burden is light.” This Sabbath, that is, this rest, is what that Scripture signifies; the Jews did not understand it, and according to the arrangement of the times they followed in a fleshly way the shadow whose body, as it were, that is, the truth, was to be given to us. But just as that rest of God is presented after the world was fashioned, so we shall obtain the rest promised to us after the works we have in this world, if they have been just, namely in the seventh and also last part of the age, which would take too long to discuss. So the Lord does not annul the Scripture of the Old Testament but compels us to understand it; nor does he abolish the Sabbath so that what was prefigured perishes, but rather opens it, so that what was covered may appear.

On the text in Genesis: “And God said: ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a helper.’ And God sent sleep upon Adam, and he fell asleep; and he took one of his ribs, from which he formed Eve, whom he brought to Adam, and he said: ‘Therefore a man will leave father and mother and cling to his wife.’” The Manichaeans again raise a false charge against this passage, saying that the statement in which God is written to have formed the woman and joined her to the man is contrary to the New Testament, because in the gospel the Lord says: “Everyone who leaves house or wife or parents or brothers or children for the sake of the kingdom of heaven will receive sevenfold in this time and in the age to come will possess eternal life.” In this false charge I wonder that they are so blinded, or rather I do not wonder; for, as it is written, “their malice has blinded them.” But who would not see how many commands there are in the New Testament about loving one's wife? Why do they say that the Old Testament opposes this saying of the Lord, in which he says that a wife must be left for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, rather than that the New Testament opposes itself? That would be impious to say. Things that seem contradictory to the unskilled must be understood, not rashly accused. For when the Lord was asked by the Jews whether he approved of dismissing a wife by giving a certificate of divorce, he answered them, saying: “Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made male and female and said: ‘For this reason a man will leave father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined, let man not separate.” And they say to him: “Why then did Moses command that a certificate of divorce be given and that she be dismissed?” Jesus says to them: “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses permitted you to dismiss your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. But I say to you: whoever dismisses his wife except for the cause of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery, and he himself, if he marries another, commits adultery.” See, they have the statement of the Old Testament confirmed by the Lord himself against the ignorance of the Jews. At the same time he also bore witness to Moses, that he permitted divorce to be given because of their hardness. Do they say that the gospel too is contrary to the gospel? And if they say that this chapter is false and was added by corrupters of the Scriptures (for that is what they usually say when they cannot find an answer), what if someone else says that the passage they themselves bring forward is the inserted and false one, where the Lord says: “Everyone who leaves house or wife or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” and so on? The wretches do not understand how, when they say such things, they are trying to overturn the whole Christian faith. But the true faith and the teaching of the catholic Church confirm that both are true and were spoken by the Lord and are in no way contradictory, because both the union of husband and wife is from the Lord and the leaving of a wife for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is from the Lord. For it is not the case that, because Jesus Christ raised the dead and gave them life, that life itself must therefore not be left for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. So, although the Lord gave the wife to the husband, she must nevertheless be left, if need be, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. For this is not always necessary, as the apostle says: “If any believer has an unbelieving wife and she consents to live with him, let him not dismiss her.” He certainly means that if she does not consent to live with him, that is, if she detests the faith of Christ in him and does not bear with him because he is a Christian, she must be left for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, as the same apostle says in what follows: “But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; for a brother or sister is not subject to bondage in such cases.” So if anyone leaves the kingdom of heaven because he will not leave a wife who does not tolerate a Christian husband, he is condemned by the Lord; and likewise if any man leaves his wife by giving a certificate of divorce when there is no cause either of sexual immorality or of gaining the kingdom of heaven, he is likewise condemned by the Lord. Thus neither are these two chapters of the gospel found to be contrary to each other, nor is the gospel contrary to the Old Testament, because there the wife is joined to the husband so that together they may be worthy to possess the kingdom of heaven; and so the wife is commanded to be left if she hinders the husband from possessing the kingdom of heaven. And so, when the apostle admonishes both Christians, that is, husbands and wives, does he not say: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her”? and: “Let wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the church too is subject to Christ”? Does not the same apostle take that text of the Old Testament which these wretches mock, where it is written, “Therefore a man will leave father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh,” as a great sacrament, when he says: “This sacrament is great; but I speak of Christ and the church”? Then he adds: “Nevertheless let each one love his wife as himself, and let the wife fear her husband.” Does he not show most plainly in another place that both the nature and the union of the two sexes stand from the Lord God, their creator and orderer, when he says: “Nevertheless neither is woman without man nor man without woman in the Lord; for as woman is from man, so also man is through woman; but all things are from God”? If they were willing to consider this, they would not create a fog for the unskilled with certain chapters torn out and set against each other with great deceit, but would perceive that everything, in the Old as in the New Testament, was written and commended by the one Holy Spirit. For in the Old Testament too they have, in the prophet Isaiah, how much is promised to eunuchs, so that they may not think that eunuchs are praised by the Lord only in the New, where he says that there are some who have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, and added: “Whoever can accept it, let him accept it.” For Isaiah too speaks thus: “Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs, those who keep my commandments and choose for themselves what I will and hold fast my covenant: I will give them in my house and within my wall a most renowned place, much better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, and it will never fail.” For before the Lord's coming, according to a wonderful and most orderly distribution of the times, that people which received the Old Testament was held under certain shadows and figures of things; yet in it there is so much proclamation and foretelling of the New Testament that no commands and promises, however demanding and divine, are found in the gospel and the apostolic teaching which are lacking even in those ancient books. But the holy Scriptures desire not rash and proud accusers, but diligent and devout readers.

On the text in Genesis: “And God said to Cain: What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth. Now you are cursed from the face of the earth, which has swallowed up and received your brother's blood from the slaughter of your hand; for you must work the earth, because it will give you barren fruits.” In raising a false charge against this chapter of Genesis, in which Cain received the curse of being punished by the barrenness of the earth, and in wishing to show it contrary to the gospel, the Manichaeans do not seem to me to think they are dealing with human beings, but with mere cattle, as if those who listened to them or read their writings were such: so have they abused their ignorance and slowness of wit, or rather their blindness of mind. For they said that this chapter is contradicted by what the Lord said to his disciples in the gospel: “Do not think about tomorrow; for tomorrow will think about itself. Look at the birds of the sky, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.” As if Cain the fratricide were to be compared with the disciples of Christ, so that, since he deserved the punishment of a barren earth, it would follow that they too should suffer the same barrenness, who, having followed our Lord Jesus Christ, were being prepared to preach the gospel! On the contrary, in these two chapters, one from Genesis and the other from the gospel, which they have set side by side as enemies, so great a friendship and harmony is found that none greater could be desired. For what is more fitting, what more suitable, than that barrenness should follow him by whose crime a brother had been killed, even as he labored on the earth, but that for those through whose ministry brothers were being set free by the preaching of God's word, the earth should serve them fruitfully even while they took no thought at all for tomorrow? If in the Old Testament they shudder that the earth was made barren for a sinner by God's curse, why do they not shudder in the New Testament that a fig tree was made dry by the curse of our Lord Jesus Christ, with no sin on the part of its master? Likewise, if they delight in the Lord's saying in which he tells his disciples not to think about tomorrow, because God takes care of their food, why do they not also delight in the prophetic saying which sang: “Cast your care upon the Lord, and he will feed you”? Thus, if they can, the wretches may understand that the things they detest in the Old Testament as said of God are so right that they are found in the New as well, and that the things they praise and proclaim in the New are found in the Old too. From this the evident harmony of both Testaments will become clear to those who understand well.

On the text in Genesis: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” The Manichaeans say that this passage, where it is written in Genesis that man was made in the image and likeness of God, is contrary to the New Testament because the Lord says to the Jews in the gospel: “You are from your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father; he was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because the truth is not in him”; and because in another place the Jews are called a brood of serpents and vipers. They do not understand that the former, that man was made in the image and likeness of God, was said of man before he sinned, whereas the latter, in the gospel, “You are from your father the devil,” is said to sinners and unbelievers. For in the holy Scriptures the name “sons” is taken in three ways: one by nature, as Isaac is Abraham's son, and also the rest of the Jews who come from the same origin; another by teaching, so that each is called the son of the one from whom he learned something, as the apostle calls his sons those who learned the gospel from him; the third by imitation, as the apostle calls us sons of Abraham because we imitate his faith. So in two ways the sinful, unbelieving Jews are called sons of the devil by the Lord: either because they learned ungodliness from him, as the apostle says of the devil himself, “who now works in the sons of unbelief”; or because they imitate him, which fits better with what was said of him, “and he did not stand in the truth,” because the Jews themselves too did not stand in the truth of the law that was given them, as the same Lord attests when he says: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.” By the venom of the same sins they are also called a brood of serpents and vipers. But not only Genesis but also the apostle proclaims that man was made in the image of God, when he says: “A man ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man.” And so that it may be clearly understood that man was made in the image of God not according to the oldness of sin, which is corrupted, but according to a spiritual formation, the apostle likewise admonishes us that, having stripped off the habit of sins, that is, the old man, we should put on the new life of Christ, which he calls the new man. And to teach that we once lost this, he calls it a renewal. For he speaks thus: “Stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him.” So the sons of God are human beings renewed to his image and made like him, even to the love of an enemy, as the Lord says that we ought to love our enemies, so that we may be like our Father who is in heaven. Scripture teaches that this has been placed in our power by God himself when it says: “He gave them power to become sons of God.” But human beings are called sons of the devil when they imitate his ungodly pride, fall from the light and height of wisdom, and do not believe the truth, such as the Lord rebukes when he says, “You are from your father the devil,” and so on. With this passage of the gospel the prophet agrees, saying: “I said, you are gods and all sons of the Most High; but you will die like men and fall like one of the princes.”

On the text in Exodus: “Honor your father and your mother.” The Manichaeans say that this passage too, where God commanded honoring parents, is contradicted by that passage of the gospel where the Lord answered someone who said, “I will go first to bury my father”: “Let the dead bury their dead; but you come and proclaim the kingdom of God.” This is resolved in the same way as the earlier passage, where it was said that a wife must be left for the sake of the kingdom of heaven: because we ought to honor our parents, and yet, for the proclamation of the kingdom of God, we disregard them without any impiety. For if the gospel is contrary to the Old Testament because of this saying, it begins to be contrary to the apostle as well, who admonishes children to honor their parents and parents to love their children. And not only that, but the Lord too will seem to contradict himself (which it is impious to believe), because in another place he says to a man seeking eternal life: “If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments,” among which he also mentions this one: “Honor father and mother.” When these commandments are fulfilled, one grows also to the love of God, in which is all perfection. For love of neighbor is a sure step to the love of God. And so to the man who answered, “I have kept all those commandments,” he says that one thing is lacking to him, if he wishes to be perfect: to sell all that he has, give to the poor, and follow him. From this it is evident that honor of parents must be kept in its own rank, and yet that, in comparison with divine love, especially if they are a hindrance, they must without any hesitation be disregarded. For in the ancient Scriptures too you have it set down: “He who says to his father or mother, ‘I do not know you,’ and does not acknowledge his sons, he has known your covenant.” So if in the New Testament love of parents is commended, and in the Old disregard of parents is commended, the two Testaments agree with each other on both counts.

On the text in Exodus: “I am a jealous God, repaying the sins of the parents to the children of the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” The Manichaeans say that this passage is contradicted by what the Lord says in the gospel: “Be kind, like your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad,” and also by what the Lord likewise says: that a brother who sins must be forgiven not only seven times but even seventy times seven. Yet if I ask them whether God does not punish his enemies, they will no doubt be thrown into confusion. For they themselves say that God is preparing an eternal prison for the race of darkness, which they say is God's enemy. And that is not all: they do not hesitate to say that he will also punish his own members together with that race. But when they come to the chapters of the Old and New Testament, in order to deceive the unskilled and accuse them of being opposed to each other, they pretend to be exceedingly good. But let them tell us to whom the Lord is going to say, “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels,” if he spares everyone and condemns no one? So it must be understood that this too is rightly said, that God will repay the parents' sins to the children who hate him. For from his adding “who hate me” it is understood that those are punished for their parents' sins who have chosen to persist in the same perversity as their parents. Such people are punished not by God's cruelty but rather by his justice and their own iniquity, as the prophet says: “For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit and withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding, and he will be rebuked when iniquity comes upon him,” that is, a man will be rebuked when his own iniquity comes upon him, once the Holy Spirit has withdrawn from him. And in another place: “These things they thought, and they went astray; for their malice blinded them.” And in another place: “Each one is bound by the cords of his own sins.” With these testimonies of the Old Testament the apostle agrees from the New, saying: “God handed them over to the desires of their heart.” This agreement of both Testaments shows well enough that God is not cruel, but that each one is cruel to himself by sinning. As for its being written that punishment proceeds to the third and fourth generation, I think it signifies nothing else than that from Abraham himself, who begins to be the father of the people of the Jews, there are four ages including the present one, which the evangelist Matthew distinguishes. One is from Abraham to David, another from David to the deportation to Babylon, the third from the deportation to Babylon to the Lord's coming; from then until the end is reckoned the fourth, as the old age of the world, longer than the other ages. We believe that these ages are put for “generations,” although each consists of many generations. And since the third begins from the Babylonian deportation, when the captivity of the Jews took place, while in the fourth, that is, after the coming of our Lord, the nation of the Jews was utterly uprooted from its own soil, this gives us to understand what was said, that God would repay the sins of the parents in the third and fourth generation, lawfully and deservedly to those who preferred to hold persistently to their parents' sins rather than follow the justice of God. For the prophet Ezekiel shows most plainly that a father's sins do not pertain to a son who lives justly. But what is said in the gospel, “Be kind as your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise on the good and the bad,” is not contrary to the Old Testament. For God does this to invite to repentance, as the apostle says: “Do you not know that God's patience invites you to repentance?” Yet we must not believe on that account that God will not punish those who, as the same apostle says, “store up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will repay each one according to his works.” For the prophet too proclaims this patience and goodness of God, saying: “But you spare all, because all things are yours, you who love souls,” and countless other things, from which it is understood that both Testaments proclaim God's mercy and justice, in goodness and in severity. And if they are disturbed by its being said, “I am jealous,” let them be disturbed also by what the apostle Paul said: “I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God; for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” For holy Scripture, speaking in our words, shows even through these words that nothing worthy can be said of God. For why should not these words too be said of that majesty, of which whatever is said is said unworthily, because it surpasses all the riches of all languages by its inexpressible sublimity? Since husbands usually guard their wives' chastity by jealousy, the Scriptures have called God's power and discipline, by which he does not allow the soul to commit fornication with impunity, the jealousy of God. And the soul's fornication is a turning away from the fruitfulness of wisdom and a turning toward the conceiving of temporal allurements and corruptions. As for his saying that a brother must be forgiven not only seven times but seventy times seven, he certainly says this of one who repents. But God said that he repays sins to those who hate him, not to those who are reconciled to him by repentance. For in the prophet too the Lord says: “I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as that he turn and live.” From this it is easily seen that in the patience that invites to repentance, in the indulgence that pardons the penitent, and in the justice that punishes those who refuse to be corrected, both Testaments agree and harmonize, as written by one God.

On the text written in Exodus: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and other such things. Against this passage, because in the old law equal retaliation is permitted and it is said that an eye must be destroyed for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the Manichaeans raise a false charge, as if the Lord himself had shown these two things in the gospel to be opposed and contrary to each other. For he himself says: “You have heard that it was said to those of old: eye for eye and tooth for tooth; but I say to you, do not resist evil, but if anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other as well, and whoever wishes to go to law with you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak too.” In these two sayings a difference between the two Testaments is indeed shown, yet between Testaments both established by one God. For since at first fleshly people burned to avenge themselves far more than the injury they complained of, a first step of gentleness was set for them: that the resentment of the one avenging himself should in no way exceed the measure of the injury received. For in this way one who had first learned not to exceed an injury might at some time also forgive it. Hence the Lord, now leading the people through the grace of the gospel to the highest peace, builds a second step upon this one, so that one who had already heard that he must not repay more than he had been harmed might rejoice, with a calm mind, to forgive the whole. The prophet proclaims this too in those ancient books, saying: “O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid evil to those who repaid me.” And another prophet says of such a man, who suffers injuries and bears them most gently: “He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him; he will be filled with reproaches.” From this it is understood both that a measure of retaliation was rightly set for fleshly people, and that complete forgiveness of injury was not only commanded in the New Testament but foretold long before in the Old.

On the texts which say that God spoke with Adam and Eve, with the serpent, with Cain, and with others of old. Among these he is also written to have appeared to some and to have been seen by them, not in one but in many places of the Scriptures, in which God is found both to have spoken with human beings and to have appeared to some. So the Manichaeans lie in wait and say that all these are contrary to the New Testament, since the Lord says: “No one has ever seen God except the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has told us of him”; and again, what he says to the Jews: “You have never heard his voice nor seen his face, nor do you have his word abiding in you, because you have not believed him whom he sent.” We reply that by that very text written in the gospel, “No one has ever seen God except the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has told us of him,” the whole question can be resolved. For the Son himself, who is the Word of God, not only in the last times, when he deigned to appear in the flesh, but also earlier, from the foundation of the world, told of the Father to whom he willed, whether by speaking or by appearing, either through some angelic power or through any creature whatever. For he is the truth in all things, and all things hold together in him, and all things serve him at his nod and are subject to him, so that he may appear even to the eyes, through a visible creature, to whom he wills, when he deigns; while he himself, according to his divinity and according to what he is as the Word of the Father, coeternal with the Father and unchangeable, through whom all things were made, is seen only by a most purified and simple heart. And so in some places Scripture itself testifies that an angel was seen where it says that God was seen; as in that wrestling of Jacob the one who appeared was also called an angel. And when he appeared to Moses in the bush, and again in the desert after he had already led the people out of the land of Egypt, when he received the law, God spoke to him; but whether in the bush, when he sent him, or afterwards, when he gave him the law, Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles says that an angel appeared to him. We say this so that no one may think that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, can be bounded by places, as it were, and appear visibly to anyone except through some visible creature. For just as the word of God is in a prophet, and it is rightly said “the prophet said,” and it is likewise rightly said “the Lord said,” because the Word of God, which is Christ, speaks the truth in the prophet: so too he himself speaks in an angel when the angel announces the truth, and it is rightly said “God said” and “God appeared,” and likewise rightly said “the angel said” and “the angel appeared,” since the one is said in the person of the indwelling God, the other in the person of the serving creature. By this rule the apostle too says: “Or do you want proof of Christ, who speaks in me?” And if they are disturbed that in the Old Testament God speaks even to sinners, to Adam or to Eve or to the serpent, let them notice also what sort of example the Lord gave in the New about the foolish and greedy man, how the Lord spoke to him when he said: “Fool, this night your soul will be taken from you; the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” For when the truth is spoken even to sinners, through whatever creature it is spoken, it is spoken only by him who alone is true. And what he says to the Jews, “You have never heard his voice,” he says because they did not obey, at least those with whom he was speaking. To them he also says, “nor have you seen his face,” because it is not possible. And as to his saying, “nor do you have his word abiding in you”: because Christ abides in the one in whom the word of God abides, and they rejected him. For when the Lord himself had said, “Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was made,” a voice sounded from heaven: “I have both glorified and will glorify.” Many of the Jews who were present heard that voice, and yet they are not therefore to be said to have heard it, because they did not obey so as to believe. Therefore, if it is not to be wondered at that the Word of God, that is, the only Son of God, who tells of the Father, does so to whom he wills by himself, to whom he wills through some creature, by sounding or appearing, while he himself is seen in himself by a pure heart, and through him the Father (for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”), then it is not to be wondered at that all these testimonies from both Testaments are in harmony.

On the text which says that God spoke to Moses and said to him: “Speak to the children of Israel: take first-fruits from every person, which you are to set aside for me, that is, gold, silver, bronze, purple, fine linen, scarlet, goats' hair, red skins of lambs, sound wood, oil for lighting, incense, precious stones, that is, beryls, and set up a tabernacle in which I may dwell with you.” From this too the Manichaeans stir up a question, and they say that what the Lord says in the gospel is contrary to this passage of the Scriptures: “You shall not swear either by heaven, because it is God's throne, or by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet.” They argue, and think they are saying something great, when they say: how does that God, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth, dwell in a tabernacle built of gold or silver and bronze and purple and the hair and skins of animals? They also bring in the apostle Paul as a witness, because he says that God dwells in unapproachable light. To them we put a matching question, and what they brought forward from the New Testament we bring forward from the Old. For there it is found written first: “Heaven is my throne, the earth the footstool of my feet; what house will you build for me, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” See, they have a place where the books of the Old Testament proclaim that God does not dwell in temples made by hands; and yet the Son of our God, with a whip made of cords, drove out of the temple those who were selling oxen and doves, overturned the tables of the money-changers, and said: “My Father's house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” So if someone wished to deceive the unskilled by setting these two chapters too against each other, and to say that in the Old Testament God is magnified, whose throne is said to be heaven and his footstool the earth, and it is denied that he dwells in a house made with hands, whereas in the New Testament a temple built by human beings is called his house: will not the Manichaeans admit, even if late, that in both Testaments a dwelling of God made by human hands is taken for some signification, and that in both Testaments it is proclaimed that God does not dwell in places fashioned by human beings?

On the texts written in Exodus: “Do not worship other gods,” and again: “Your God is called jealous; for in jealousy he was jealous.” When the Manichaeans raise a false charge against this chapter, in which it is written, “Do not worship other gods,” they show well enough that they are pleased that many gods be worshiped. No wonder, since in their sect they recount and commend a most numerous family of gods; indeed they have come even to these visible things, which they venerate and worship in place of the light of truth itself; and so they dislike what is written in Exodus: “Do not worship other gods.” They add that this was said for that reason: “Your God is called jealous; for in jealousy he was jealous,” so that we should not love, as a jealous God, him whose jealousy does not allow us to be devoted to other gods. And so they say that these things are contrary to the gospel, since the Lord says, “Righteous Father, the world has not known you,” as if God were not to be called righteous unless he allowed us to worship other gods. For they argue that a righteous God and a jealous God are contrary to each other, and they deceive wretched people who do not understand that the whole hope of our salvation is the jealousy of God. For by this name is signified that providence of his by which he allows no soul to commit fornication away from him with impunity, as the prophet says: “You will destroy all who commit fornication away from you.” For just as what is called the anger of God is not a disturbance of mind but the power of punishing, so the jealousy of God is not the torment of spirit by which a husband against his wife, or a wife against her husband, is usually tortured, but a most tranquil and pure justice, by which no soul is allowed to be happy that is corrupted and, in a manner, made pregnant by false opinions and perverse desires. Those shudder at these words who have not yet seen that no words fit the inexpressible majesty of God. For they think one should refrain from these words as if they themselves were saying something worthy of God when they do not say them. But the Holy Spirit, suggesting to people of understanding how inexpressible the highest divine things are, chose to use even these words which among human beings are usually counted as faults, so that people might be reminded thereby that even the things they think they say with some dignity befitting God are unworthy of his majesty, to which honoring silence would be more fitting than any human voice. I look for human jealousy and I find a disturbance that torments the heart. Yet when I look for its cause, I find nothing else than that it does not tolerate a spouse's adultery. For jealousy is most often and properly spoken of between spouses. So if a husband were happy in himself, almighty, and just, he would punish his spouse's sin without any torment, with complete ease, and with no injustice. Yet, in the human manner of speaking, I would call that action of his jealousy, even if not properly, still figuratively and rightly. For who has brought a false charge against Tullius, who certainly knew how to speak Latin, when he said to Caesar: “Of your virtues none is more admirable or more pleasing than your mercy”? And yet they say that misericordia (mercy) is so called because it makes the heart of one who grieves at another's misery miserable. Does virtue, then, make the heart miserable? What would Tullius answer to such false accusers, except that by the name of mercy he meant clemency? For we rightly speak by using not only proper words but also neighboring ones. I chose to mention this author because the question is not about the thing but about a word. For just as our authors, that is, the authors of the divine writings, have thought chiefly about things, so almost all the care of worldly authors is about words. But I have the gospel and all the books of the New Testament, in which God's mercy is commended very often. So if these wretches dare, let them make a question of that too, and deny that God is merciful, lest he be understood to have a miserable heart. Therefore, just as there can be mercy in God without misery of heart, so let us not disdain to accept the jealousy of God without decay or torment of spirit, and let us bear with the conditions of human speech so as to reach divine silence. But if they say that a jealous God and a righteous God are contraries, what will they say when I find in the New Testament too, “I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God,” and a testimony from the old books cited in the gospel, “Zeal for your house has consumed me”? Again, when they read in the Old, “The Lord is righteous and has loved righteousness; his face has seen equity,” will they not admit that in this way too the two Testaments can seem contrary to the unskilled, so that we find the jealousy of God in the New and the righteousness of God in the Old? But to those who understand well, both are in harmony in both, in the great unity and peace of the Holy Spirit.

On the text which says that blood must not be eaten, because the blood is the soul of the flesh. Against this saying of the old law the Manichaeans set what the Lord says in the gospel, that we should not fear those who can kill the body but cannot harm the soul, and they argue, saying: if the blood is the soul, how do human beings have no power over it, when they do many things with blood, whether catching it and putting it out as food for dogs and birds, or pouring it out, or mixing it with mud and filth? For human beings can do these and countless other things with blood without difficulty. So they ask mockingly how, if the soul is of the blood, a killer of a human being cannot harm the soul, when he has such power over its blood. They also add what the apostle Paul says, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, and they say: if the blood is the soul, as Moses says, no soul will be found able to obtain the kingdom of God. To this false charge we must first reply by compelling them to show where in the books of the old law it is written that the human soul is blood. For they will never find this in that Scripture which the wretches, as long as they try to tear it to pieces, are in no way permitted to understand. And if nothing of the kind is said there about the human soul, what does it matter to us whether the soul of a beast can be harmed by a killer, or cannot possess the kingdom of God? But since they are excessively anxious about the souls of beasts (for though the souls of human beings are rational, they nonetheless think they are rolled back into beasts), they think the kingdom of heaven is shut against themselves if they agree that it is shut against the souls of beasts. What of the fact that Adimantus, one of the disciples of Mani, whom they recall as a great teacher of that sect, even dared to mock the people of Israel? He dared, then, to mock the people of the Jews because, according to their understanding, by which they think that blood is the soul, the souls of their forefathers were partly devoured by serpents, partly consumed by fire, partly dried up in deserts and in the roughest places of the mountains. If anyone granted that this is true, he would still prove that it happened without guilt on the part of those whom this man chose to mock. For they themselves did not in any way harm the souls of their forefathers, to whom, on this understanding, he said all those things happened; so they may have grief from it, but not guilt. But what will Adimantus himself do, by his own opinion, by which he believed that even rational souls, that is, the souls of human beings, can be thrust into the bodies of beasts? What will he do about so great a crime, if he ever wore out a slow beast of burden with blows or a spirited one with the bridle, in which perhaps his father's soul was? Not to mention that he could even have killed his parents among lice and fleas, from killing which they do not refrain. For what does it help them that they sometimes deny that human souls can be rolled back as far as these tiniest creatures? They deny this so as not to be held guilty of so many killings, or be forced to spare fleas and lice and bedbugs and endure such great annoyances from them without any license to kill them. For they are pressed hard to say why a human soul can be rolled back into a fox and not into a weasel, when a fox cub may even be smaller than a large weasel. Then, if into a weasel, why not into a mouse? And if into that, why not into a lizard? And if into that, why not into a locust? then into a bee, then into a fly, then into a bedbug, and from there down to a flea and to anything else much tinier? For they find no place to set a limit, and so, through this trifling cruelty, their consciences are buried under countless crimes of murder. Now, regarding what is written, that the blood of a beast is its soul: besides what I said above, that it does not concern me what becomes of the soul of a beast, I can also interpret that command as given as a sign. For the Lord did not hesitate to say, “This is my body,” when he gave the sign of his body. As for what the apostle says, “Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God,” it is also said in the law: “My spirit will not remain in these, because they are flesh”; and yet so often in the ancient books a future reward is promised to the souls of the righteous. But the apostle wished to suggest what kind of body the righteous will have through transformation in the resurrection, since they will neither marry nor take wives but will be like the angels in heaven; wishing, then, to suggest this future transformation of the bodies of the saints, the apostle said: “For I tell you, brothers, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God.” This can be found not from a single saying torn out and cited for deceit, but by working through, or rather simply reading, the whole passage of the letter (for the matter is not obscure). For he says: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” That he says this of the body is plainly found from what precedes, when he says: “Not all flesh is the same flesh: there is one of human beings, another of beasts, another flesh of birds, another of fish; and there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the glory of the heavenly is one and that of the earthly another; one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it will rise in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it will rise in glory; it is sown in weakness, it will rise in power; it is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body. If there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual one, as it is written: the first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the animal, and afterwards the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthly, so are the earthly, and as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven. This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor will corruption inherit incorruption.” Surely it is now clear why the apostle said this. Why then does this man, by so shameful a deceit, cite only this last sentence and keep silent about what precedes, by which what he wrongly interprets can be rightly understood? For since the body of our Lord after the resurrection was lifted into heaven in such a way that it received a heavenly transformation suited to that heavenly dwelling, and we have been commanded to hope for this on the last day, the apostle therefore said: “As was the earthly, so are the earthly,” that is, mortal, “and as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly,” that is, immortal not only in souls but also in bodies. Hence he had also said above that the glory of heavenly bodies is one and that of earthly bodies another. And when he says that there will be a spiritual body in the resurrection, it is not to be thought that it will not be a body but a spirit; rather, he calls spiritual a body wholly subject to the spirit, without any corruption or death. For it is not the case that, because you now call the body we have an animal body, it must be thought to be not a body but a soul. Therefore, just as it is now called an animal body because it is subject to the soul, but cannot yet be called spiritual, because it is not yet fully subject to the spirit as long as it can still be corrupted, so it will then be called spiritual when it can offer no resistance, through any corruption, to the spirit and to eternity. Or if it still seems insufficiently shown that the apostle said this sentence because of the transformation that is to come, when he says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor will corruption inherit incorruption,” notice what he at once adds and joins to it: “Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed.” Then he continues and says also what I mentioned a little before, to show what the transformation itself will be like. For he says immediately: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” From this, then, it appears why flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God: because when it has put on incorruption and immortality, it will no longer be flesh and blood but will be changed into a heavenly body. We have treated this as the occasion arose, because those who deny the resurrection of bodies are accustomed to lay many traps around this saying too. For this question was raised not about the body but about the soul, which they think is taken in the law in such a way that it is held to be blood; which we in no way understand so. But although we do not concern ourselves with the souls of beasts, with which we have no fellowship of reason, nonetheless we say that what the law says, that blood must be poured out and not taken as food because the blood is the soul, was set down as a sign, as were many other things; indeed almost all the sacraments of those Scriptures are full of signs and figures of the future proclamation, which has now been made plain through our Lord Jesus Christ. For the blood is the soul in the way that the rock was Christ, as the apostle says: “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” It is known that the children of Israel drank water from a rock that was struck in the desert, of whom the apostle was speaking when he said this. Yet he did not say, “the rock signified Christ,” but says, “the rock was Christ.” And lest this in turn be taken in a fleshly way, he calls it spiritual, that is, he teaches that it is to be understood spiritually. It would take long, and is not necessary now, to expound the sacraments of that law, except where they can be done briefly. It is enough that those who raise false charges about them should know that we do not understand them in the way they are accustomed to mock, but in the way the apostles, understanding everything, expounded a few things, so as to leave the rest to be understood by later generations according to the same rules.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “See that you do not forget the covenant of your God which he wrote down, and make for yourselves likenesses and images,” to which he added, saying: “Your God is a devouring fire and a jealous God.” That Adimantus set out these words from the Scriptures in this way, for we have undertaken to refute and rebut his false charges. But when he raised a false charge about God's jealousy earlier, I think a sufficient answer was given. Let us remember, however, that not only there but here too he accused the Scriptures about God's jealousy in such a way as to add also what the Lord our God commands in those books about not worshiping idols, as if he found fault with God's jealousy for no other reason than that by that very jealousy we are forbidden the worship of idols; so he wants to seem to favor idols. They do this in order to win for their most wretched and insane sect the goodwill of the pagans as well. Against this chapter of the law they also set the passage where someone came to the Lord and said to him, “Good teacher, what shall I do to possess eternal life?” and Jesus answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? No one is good but the one God,” so that we should evidently think these things contrary, because in the law it is said, “God is a devouring fire,” and, “God is jealous,” but in the gospel, “No one is good but the one God.” As for jealousy, it has already been answered that these words are not set in the Scriptures to signify any disturbance or torment in God, but that, because nothing worthy can be said of God, Scripture went as far as these words, so that, when people judge them unworthy, they may be compelled to learn that even the things they think they say fittingly of the inexpressible divine excellence are unworthy of God's majesty. For when his Wisdom was about to descend as far as a human body, it first descended as far as human words. And when I begin to examine this word, I see that I have not spoken properly: for nothing can descend except what can also move from place to place. For one who descends is seen to leave a higher place and seek a lower one. But since the Wisdom of God is present whole everywhere, it can in no way move from place to place. John speaks better of it in the gospel, as one who shared the Lord's breast. For he says: “He was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him”; and yet he himself adds and says: “He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.” How was he here, and how did he come, except that that inexpressible sublimity, in order to suit human beings, must be signified by human sounds, but, in order to make human beings gods, must be understood in divine silence? So a reason can be given why it was said thus; yet nothing can be said worthily of God, since it is already unworthy by the very fact that it could be said. Take away error and pain from jealousy: what else will remain but a will that guards chastity and punishes conjugal corruption? By what word, then, could it be better suggested than by “the jealousy of God” that we are called to marriage with God, and that he does not want us to be corrupted by shameful love, and punishes our unchastity, and loves chastity? For not for nothing is it commonly said: he who is not jealous does not love. To this also belongs what is said, “a devouring fire”: about which I need not argue, but rather ask them what fire the Lord said he had come to send into this world. For this is said in the gospel, which they cannot accuse, not because they honor Christ, but in order to deceive Christians. When it is pointed out to them that the Lord said, “I have come to send fire into this world,” the wretches say: “But that is something else.” To them we reply: “And this is something else too; do not be afraid.” For Christ himself speaks also in the Old Testament when he says, “I am a devouring fire,” he who speaks in the gospel of having come to send fire into this world, that is, the Word of God, which is himself. For after the resurrection he certainly expounded the old Scriptures to the disciples, beginning from Moses and all the prophets, when the disciples themselves confessed that they had received fire, saying: “Was not our heart burning on the way, while he opened the Scriptures to us?” He himself is the devouring fire: for divine love consumes the old life and renews the human being, so that by being a devouring fire God makes us love him, and by being jealous he himself loves us. So do not fear the fire which is God, but fear the fire which God has prepared for heretics. As for the passage Adimantus chose from the gospel to throw before the unskilled against this chapter of the law as if it were contrary, where the Lord says, “No one is good but the one God”: who could count how often the goodness of God is found in the Old Testament? Yet I will set down one, which is sung daily in the churches: “Give praise to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever.” Certainly this too seems contrary to a jealous God, as the Manichaeans think, and yet it is sung in the books of the Old Testament. Again, that king who was holding a wedding for his son found among the guests a man without a wedding garment and, first addressing him by the name of friend, ordered him to be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness; to those who understand with difficulty he does not seem good. And if anyone were to set out that very chapter of the gospel and accuse the gospel falsely, as Adimantus does the Old Testament, praising rather the books of the Old Testament where it is written, “Give praise to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever,” and finding fault in the New that an invited guest is sent to so great a punishment because of a garment; and if he did this continually with deceitful perversity, collecting all the passages of gentleness from the Old Testament and the passages of severity from the New and maintaining that they are opposed to each other, praising the old and finding fault with the new: he would likewise find unskilled people, wretchedly ignorant of the divine Scriptures, whom he could persuade that the Old Testament rather than the New should be kept. Since these people do this from the other side, that is, finding fault with the Old as if contrary to the New, I wonder that they do not think that someone may at some time read both, and by divine help understand and praise both, and either grieve over their deceit and malice as that of human beings, or guard against it as that of heretics, or laugh at it as that of ignorant and proud men.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you; but take care not to eat blood, but pour it out like water upon the ground.” Adimantus thinks that what the Lord says in the gospel is contrary to these words of the law: “Let your hearts not be weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares”; and what the apostle says, “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine”; and again, “You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” But we say that all these things, whether written in the Old or in the New Testament, were set down as their own reasons required, and we show that they are not opposed to each other. Yet he himself could have noticed, in the very words he set down from the Old Testament, that the saying “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat” does not refer to immoderate gluttony, since there follows: “according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you.” For the Lord has not given you immoderate pleasure, but as much as suffices for the sustenance and health of nature. Whoever follows immoderate gluttony follows his own vice, not the pleasure which the Lord gave; and so what is set down in the gospel is not contrary: “Let your hearts not be weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares.” For when anyone fills up nothing but the pleasure the Lord has given, that is, a moderate and natural one, his heart is not weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares. As for what the apostle says about not eating meat and not drinking wine, he did not command this because he thought those things unclean, as these people suppose, who in their error hurl into error those they have persuaded of such things. But since he himself has given the reason why he said this, this saying need not be interpreted or expounded by us. It is enough to join the whole passage from the apostle's letter to this discussion, so that both the reason why the apostle said this and the deceit of these people may clearly appear, who pick out certain fragments of the Scriptures to deceive the unskilled, without connecting what is written above and below, from which the will and intention of the writer can be understood. So the apostle says: “Welcome the one who is weak in faith, not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat everything; but let the one who is weak eat vegetables. Let the one who eats not despise the one who does not eat, and let the one who does not eat not judge the one who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One judges between days, another judges every day alike. Let each abound in his own understanding. The one who observes the day observes it for the Lord, and the one who eats eats for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and the one who does not eat abstains for the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for himself, and none dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord of the dead and the living. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of the Lord. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So each of us will give account for himself. Let us therefore no longer judge one another, but rather judge this: not to put a stumbling block or occasion of offense before your brothers. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is common through him; but to one who thinks anything to be common, to him it is common. For if your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not by your food destroy him for whom Christ died. So let not our good be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in this pleases God and is approved by human beings. So let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but it is evil for the person who eats with offense. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine, or anything by which your brother is offended. The faith that you have, keep to yourself before God. Blessed is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But whoever doubts is condemned if he eats, because it is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” Is anyone's interpretation needed in order to understand both why the apostle said this and with what malice these people pluck certain pieces out of the Scriptures to trap the unskilled? For the apostle said both that all things are clean according to faith, and that they are unclean to the one who thinks them unclean, and that one must abstain from them when they are taken with offense, that is, when some weak person thinks he must abstain from all meat lest he come upon sacrificial meat, and so can think that one who eats does it in honor of idols and be gravely offended by it, although sacrificial meat itself, if taken in faith by someone who does not know, defiles no one. Hence in another place the same apostle forbids asking questions when something is bought from the market, or when someone invited by an unbeliever sees meat served to him at his table, meat which these people think unclean not because of the sacrifice but because it is meat; whereas the apostle proclaims that all things are clean, that every creature of God is good, and that all things are sanctified through the word and prayer, and yet that one should abstain from them if perhaps some weak person is offended. And in one place he pointed to these people most plainly when he said that in the last times there would be some who forbid marriage and abstain from foods which God created. For he properly designates those who abstain from such foods not in order to rein in their own desire or to spare another's weakness, but because they think meat itself unclean and deny that God is its creator. But let us hold to the apostolic teaching which says that to the clean all things are clean, keeping the moderation of the gospel, so that our hearts may not be weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares. As for what the same apostle says, “You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons,” I do not see why the Manichaeans believed it should be set against this passage of the law as if contrary. For the law is not speaking of sacrifices when it says in Deuteronomy, “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you,” but of foods that belong to human nourishment. But since the Manichaeans say that even when any animals are prepared for a person's dinner it is a sacrifice, by their own understanding they thought these things contrary. That is why they also cited the passage where the apostle says, “What the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God,” although the apostle was speaking most plainly of victims offered to demons in a temple, not of the foods people prepare for themselves. For he says: “What then? Do I say that what is sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to become partners of demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own, but that of the other. Eat whatever is sold in the market, asking no questions for conscience' sake. For the earth is the Lord's and its fullness. If any of the unbelievers invites you and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you, raising no question for conscience' sake. But if anyone says to you, ‘This is sacrificial meat,’ do not eat, for the sake of the one who pointed it out, and for conscience' sake; I mean not your conscience but the other's. For why is my freedom judged by another's conscience? If I partake with thanks, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Let the Manichaeans pay attention to this, and see in what sense it is said in Deuteronomy: “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you.” For what was commanded the Jews about not eating certain meats, which were called unclean, serves to signify unclean people, who are marked out by figures in the ancient Scriptures. For just as that ox, which he forbids to be muzzled while threshing, signifies the preacher of the gospel, as the apostle most plainly explains, so also the things that were forbidden signify certain kinds of human uncleanness which are not received into the fellowship of the body of Christ, that is, into the stable and everlasting Church. For as far as food is concerned, it appears most clearly that nothing at all is unclean, but that it is evil for the person who eats with offense.

On the text written in Leviticus: “Separate the unclean from the clean, and let no one eat the meat of the camel, the ass, the hare, the pig, the eagle, the kite, the raven, the vulture, and the rest.” Nowhere can the soul of this man, who threw up chapters of both Testaments as if opposed and contrary to each other, be caught more plainly full of tricks and frauds than in this passage, where he mentioned that it is written in Leviticus that one should abstain from the meat of some animals. For against this saying he thought he should set the passage of the gospel where the Lord says: “Nothing that goes into a person defiles him, but the things that come out of him defile him.” If he did this unwittingly, nothing is blinder; if knowingly, nothing more wicked. Had he not himself set down a little before the testimony of the apostle saying, “It is good, brothers, not to eat meat or drink wine,” when he wanted the New Testament to oppose the Old, where it is said, “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat”? How then does he now like the Lord's saying, in which he says that nothing that goes into a person defiles him, but that the things that come out of a person defile him? Where will he hide from this saying? Where will he flee? Let him tell me: when does he command, with a perverse and superstitious fancy of self-restraint, that the uncleanness of meats must be shunned and kept apart from the food of the saints? For surely, if it is true that the things that go into a person do not defile him, the Manichaeans say in great error that foods are unclean when people eat meat. But if such foods are unclean, what will they do with this testimony, brought forward on the gospel's divine authority, where the Lord says that a person is not defiled by the things that go into him but by those that come out of him? Or will they perhaps say, as they usually do when the authority of the Scriptures presses them, that this chapter was inserted into the gospel by corrupters of the Scriptures? Why then does Adimantus use this chapter as a witness and try from it to attack the Old Testament, when he himself is laid low by it? For when some catholic Christian, who reveres and understands both Scriptures, answers him that these are not contrary, because those commands about the meats of certain animals, which a still fleshly people was commanded not to eat, were set down to signify human ways of life which the Church, which is the body of the Lord, cannot receive into the stable and everlasting bond of its unity, rejecting them as unclean foods and not converting them into its inner parts; so that all those commands laid on a fleshly people prophesied the future discipline of a spiritual people; and that therefore they do not conflict with the Lord's saying, in which he says most truly that a person is not defiled by what goes into him as food (for that saying lays burdens on servants, this one now shakes the yoke of servitude off free people; and yet that one was so spoken that the burdens of the servants foretell the faith of the free; for all things, as the apostle says, happened to them in figure for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come; if, then, what they suffered happened in figure, what they were instructed they received in figure): when I have answered thus, and shown in this way that these two chapters brought from the two Testaments are not contrary, what will he do, against whom a witness gives the gravest testimony, a witness whom he himself produced against his adversary? For he himself cited from the gospel the testimony of the Lord saying that a person is not defiled by the foods that go into him; and he himself does not cease admonishing and teaching that one must abstain from meat as from unclean food. And yet he felt how great a wound he was inflicting on himself, and with how great a blow he would wound himself on the rebound. For lest anyone ask him and say, “How then do you forbid eating meat, if the Lord says, as you yourself mention, ‘Nothing that goes into a person defiles him, but the things that come out of him defile him’?”, he wanted, as it were, to apply a remedy, to no purpose, to a mortal wound. For he set down the gospel testimony itself thus: “In the gospel,” he says, “the Lord says to the crowd: Hear and understand, nothing that goes into a person defiles him,” and so on. His mentioning that the Lord said this to the crowd shows nothing else than that he did what he did not from ignorance but from malice, so that he might afterwards tell his hearers that the Lord said these things to the crowd, not to the few saints, such as they want themselves to be thought; so that, since they permit their hearers, as still unclean, to eat meat, but think it criminal and wicked for themselves, as already clean, the Lord might seem to have held this view too, since he taught these things not to a few saints but to the crowds. O most wicked man, so sure of the carelessness of the human race for hiding his deceptions! For he did not believe that anyone would exist who would take up the gospel and read what follows, and would find a man hiding snares for the unwary and less careful in the very pastures where the Lord feeds his flocks. For the disciples, disturbed by these words and believing that the Lord had spoken not literally but figuratively when he said that a person is not defiled by what goes into him through food (since the disciples too were Jews, who had received from childhood an ingrained habit of shunning certain meats as food), came to him and said: “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard the saying?” And he answered and said: “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them be: they are blind and leaders of the blind. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both fall into a pit.” So, although he called the unbelief of the Jews a planting which the heavenly Father had not planted, Peter, still thinking that it was a parable and that the Jews had been rebuked and called blind because they could not understand it, answered and said to him: “Explain this parable to us.” And he, showing most plainly that it was not a parable but a literal statement, said to them: “Are you too still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything that enters the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the drain? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and that defiles a person. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; these are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person.” The Jews had raised the question about unwashed hands, and on that occasion the Lord pronounced his saying in general about the things that enter the mouth, go into the belly, and are cast into the drain, that is, about our food. So although it is written that he called the crowds to himself and said, “Not what enters the mouth defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth,” it is clear enough, as was said a little before, with what fear this man added this to his words in which he cited such a testimony: so that he might have an answer for those who raised the question with him why the leaders of the Manichaeans think it wicked for themselves to eat meat, namely so that the Lord might seem to have granted what he said only to the crowds, not to the elect. But since it is made clear from what follows that the Lord also answered Peter, who asked him privately, and the disciples who heard him, whom he was certainly bringing forward to the summit of the Church, in such a way that he testified that he had not said those things in a parable and showed that they applied to all, these people have no ground on which to take food from people's mouths and bind them with the noose of superstition. Perhaps one of them may say: “Explain, then, what is signified by the meat of the pig and camel and hare and kite and raven and the rest, from which the law commands abstinence.” I will not, because it is long. But suppose I cannot: does it follow that no one can? There are already countless volumes in which these things are explained. For refuting these people, however, it is enough for us that not I but the apostle says that those observances are a shadow of things to come, when he forbids them to be kept in servile fashion and yet declares that they signify something, saying: “Let no one judge you in food or in drink or in regard to a feast day or a new moon or sabbaths, which is a shadow of things to come.” So once those things to come, which were signified in those observances, came through our Lord Jesus Christ, the servile observances were removed, but their interpretations are kept by the free. For whatever signified the Church to come is prophecy. And you have the same apostle saying: “Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecy; read all things, hold fast what is good.” So the divine Scripture must be read, the arrangement of the Holy Spirit recognized, and the prophecy looked into; and fleshly servitude must be rejected and free understanding retained.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “Keep and sanctify the day, as the Lord has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but on the seventh day, the day of the Sabbath, feast to the Lord your God, doing no work, you or your son or your daughter or your male or female servant, your ox and your ass and all your beasts and your tenant; let your manservant and your maidservant rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God rescued you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. That is why the Lord commanded you to keep the seventh day.” And again it is written in Genesis, where he speaks to Abraham about circumcision: “Keep my covenant,” he says, “you and your seed that will be after you. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your seed: you shall circumcise every male in the flesh of their foreskin; and let this be the sign of the covenant between me and you. On the eighth day you shall circumcise all the males in your nation, so that you circumcise also the one born in the house and the one bought, besides the foreigner; and this shall be the covenant in your nation. And every male who does not circumcise his foreskin shall lose his soul from the midst of the people, because he has broken my covenant.” Adimantus sets out all these words of the Old Testament in order to oppose the New Testament to them, and he asserts that what the Lord says in the gospel about the proselyte is contrary: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who travel around sea and land to make one proselyte; and when you have made him, he will be a son of hell much more than you are.” As if the Lord called the proselyte a son of hell because he is circumcised and observes the Sabbath, and not rather because he is compelled to imitate the depraved morals and wicked way of life of the Jews, not in that they observe the commandments of the law, but in that they act against the law. He says this of them most plainly in another place, where he says that they reject the commandment of God in order to establish their own tradition: because, though the law commanded that father and mother be honored, they themselves laid down a way for parents to be dishonored. And likewise when he says to them: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who have the keys of the kingdom of heaven; you neither enter yourselves nor allow others to enter.” Or when in another place he commanded his hearers to obey the words of the scribes and Pharisees but not to imitate their deeds. For he says: “They sit on the seat of Moses; do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” In this passage the Lord both confirms the authority of the law given through Moses and yet shows most plainly that the morals of those who did not obey the law they had received must be guarded against and shunned. By these perversities of theirs they brought it about that, when any Gentile had passed over to their law, that is, had become a proselyte, he took on their morals and became a son of hell much more than they were themselves. For they took great pains that someone from the Gentiles should become a Jew, and once he had become a Jew they compelled him to imitate their very bad morals. Nor could Adimantus notice that what he cites from the apostle as contrary is not contrary at all, because his whole eye was intent not on examining Scripture but on finding fault with it. For he cites the apostle saying: “Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin. Was anyone called in foreskin? Let him not be circumcised; for foreskin is nothing and circumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God.” What is plainer than that the apostle commands here that each should remain as he was called? For when the realities came of which those observances were shadows, this was done to show that hope must not be placed in the shadows themselves, but in the realities which those shadows signified would come, that is, Christ and the Church. And so all those things were by then empty; yet the apostle commands that they be disregarded as superfluous rather than removed as harmful, so that if any Jew had believed in Christ, he should not be forbidden, to avoid offending his own people, to remain in those superfluous things, yet should not think his salvation was established in them; for it is not those signs but what they signify that bring one into salvation. And so foreskin is nothing and circumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God. And when he says in another place, “Would that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off,” the apostle does not say this because circumcision is contrary to the gospel, as the Manichaeans think; what is contrary to the gospel is that anyone should desert the reality figured by that shadow and follow the emptiness of the shadow itself. This is what those wanted who imposed the yoke of circumcision, as necessary for salvation, on Gentiles believing in Christ, when a shadow was no longer to be figured in the body, but the reality itself was to be carried in the heart. And what he says, “You observe days and sabbaths and solemnities; I fear for you, lest I have labored over you in vain,” is not in fact written as Adimantus puts it. For the apostle does not name the Sabbath there. He says: “You observe days and years and seasons; I fear for you, lest I have labored over you in vain.” But suppose it was said of the Sabbath: do we too not say that these things are not to be observed, but rather those which they signify? For they observed them servilely, not understanding to the signification and foretelling of what realities they pertained. This is what the apostle blames in them and in all who serve the creature rather than the Creator. For we too solemnly observe the Lord's day and Easter and any other Christian festivals of days; but since we understand what they point to, we observe not the times but what is signified by those times. The Manichaeans, however, find fault with these things as if they observed no days and seasons. But when they are questioned about these according to the opinion of their sect, they try to explain everything so that they seem to observe not the times themselves but the realities of which they are signs. That these realities are fabulous and utterly false is shown in other places; it is said now so that they may be compelled to admit with their own mouth that such things can be celebrated reasonably. And so it is evident that circumcision of the flesh was both rightly imposed on servants and rightly understood by the free. We therefore reject it as fleshly, with the apostle, and approve it as spiritual, with the apostle; and we do not observe the rest of the Sabbath in time, but understand the temporal sign and direct the gaze of the heart to the eternal rest which that sign signifies. So we reject the observance of times with the apostle, and we hold the understanding of temporal signs with the apostle; and we approve the difference of the two Testaments in such a way that in the one are the burdens of servants, in the other the joys of the free; in the one the prefiguring of our possession is recognized, in the other the possession itself is held. The apostle interprets the Sabbath in Hebrews when he says, “So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” He also interprets circumcision when he says of Abraham, “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith.” So I hold the apostolic interpretation spiritually, and by freedom I disregard the fleshly observance of servitude, revering God as the author of both Testaments, who both set against the old man as he fled, as a Lord, something to fear, and opened to the new man as he returned, as a Father, something to love.

On the text in Exodus: “If you listen with your ear to my voice and do whatever I command you, I will hate those who hate you and afflict those who afflict you; my angel will go before you and will lead you to the Amorites and Perizzites and Canaanites and Jebusites and Girgashites, and you shall kill them. Do not worship their gods nor do their works, but overthrow them utterly and blot out their memory.” Against these words thus cited from the old books, Adimantus sets as contrary what is written in the gospel, where the Lord says: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.” In this passage we must first see that what he pointed out was written in the old law about killing enemies ought to have been enough for a man who wanted to show contradictions. For the Lord's command about loving enemies certainly concerned human beings, who can be converted to salvation through our patience and love, as anyone understands and as has very often been shown by examples. What then does he mean by thinking he should add what follows, where it is written, “Do not worship their gods nor do their works, but overthrow them utterly and blot out their memory,” unless the Manichaeans compel us to love the gods of the Gentiles too, and think that what the Lord says in the gospel, “Love your enemies,” applies not only to human beings but also to demons, or even to idols? If that is so, who would not detest such madness? But if they do not think so, this man went badly astray in choosing to cite the Old Testament command that the superstitions of the Gentiles be overthrown, when he wanted to set against it as contrary what is written in the New about loving enemies. We, however, do not say that what was said to that people in the old books about killing human enemies is contrary to this gospel command by which the Lord commands us to love our enemies, since that killing of enemies suited a people still fleshly, to whom the law had been given as a tutor, as the apostle says. But as for those who were then holy and spiritual in that people, very few, like Moses, like the prophets, with what spirit they carried out that killing of enemies, whether they loved those whom they killed, is quite hidden from the untaught and the ungodly, who love their blindness; and since they are not fit to see these things, they must rather be pressed by the weight of authority. For what does the apostle mean when he says: “For I, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, the one who has done this, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you and my spirit being gathered with the power of our Lord Jesus, to hand such a one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”? What does that killing which these people greatly exaggerate and spread about invidiously involve, except the destruction of the flesh? But since the apostle explained with what spirit he acted, he made it clear enough that punishment can proceed against an enemy with love. And yet here the destruction of the flesh may perhaps be understood in another way too, as happening through repentance. But they themselves read apocryphal scriptures, which they even call most uncorrupted, where it is written that the apostle Thomas cursed a man by whom he had been struck with the palm of the hand through rashness, the man not knowing who he was, and that the curse took effect at once. For when that man, being the attendant at the banquet, went out to the spring to bring water, he was killed and torn to pieces by a lion; and so that this might be made known to frighten others, a dog brought his hand to the tables where the apostle was dining. And so, when those who did not know asked the cause and it was revealed to them, they were turned to great fear and great honor of the apostle; and from this came the beginning of commending the gospel. If anyone wanted to turn the Manichaeans' teeth against themselves, how bitingly he could find fault with this! But since there too the spirit in which it was done is not passed over in silence, the love of the one who punished is seen. For in that scripture one reads that the apostle prayed for the man on whom temporal punishment had fallen, that he might be spared at the future judgment. If, then, in the time of the New Testament, when love is above all commended, fear was divinely cast upon fleshly people by visible punishments, how much more must we understand that this suited that people in the time of the Old Testament, whom the fear of the law restrained like a tutor? For this is the shortest and plainest difference between the two Testaments: fear and love. The one belongs to the old man, the other to the new; yet both were brought forth and joined by the most merciful arrangement of the one God. And in the Old Scripture the spirit of those who punished is passed over in silence, because the very few spiritual men knew by divine revelation what they were doing, so that the people, for whom terror was useful, might be tamed by a most severe command; so that, just as they saw ungodly enemies and worshipers of idols handed over into their hands to be killed, they themselves might dread being handed over into the hands of their enemies if they despised the commands of the true God and slipped into the worship of idols and the ungodliness of the Gentiles. For when they themselves sinned in a similar way, punishment fell on them in a like manner. But all this temporal punishment frightens weak minds, so that it may instruct those brought up under discipline and turn them away from eternal and inexpressible punishments, because fleshly people fear more what God punishes in the present than what he threatens for the future. So there can be love in one who punishes, as everyone shows with his own son when he restrains him with the most severe correction as he slides into very bad ways, and the more so the more he loves him and thinks he can be corrected in this way. People do not kill the sons they love when they want to correct them, because many hold this life to be a great good and place all their hope of bringing up their sons in this life. And faithful and wise people, who believe that there is another, better life and know it in part as far as they can, do not themselves punish by killing when they want to correct their sons, because they believe they can be corrected in this life. But God, who knows what to give to each, punishes by killing whomever he wills, whether through human beings or by the hidden order of things, not because he hates them insofar as they are human beings, but insofar as they are sinners. For in those very old books we read it said to God: “And you hate nothing of the things you have made”; but he disposes all things, whether by punishments or by rewards, with justice governing. Was not the apostle Paul speaking to Christian believers when he said: “Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and so drink of the cup. For whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment on himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a good number are sleeping. But if we judged ourselves, we would certainly not be judged. But when we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned with this world”? See, it is evident that God corrects with love, not only by weaknesses and illnesses but even by temporal deaths, those whom he does not wish to condemn with the world. Let these people pay attention to this and see how ungodly nations could be handed over to be killed into the hands of a people that, though still fleshly, worshiped the one God, while any spiritual people in that nation understood God's arrangement without hatred of anyone; and see how what the Lord commands us in the gospel, to love our enemies, is not contrary, although he himself promises vengeance on them, when he brings in the comparison of that judge who, though he was unjust, neither fearing God nor respecting human beings, could not bear the daily pleas of the widow asking him to avenge her, and heard her so as not to be troubled further; from this comparison he said that God, who is most kind and most just, much more avenges his sons on their enemies. Let these people dare to raise a question against him and say, if they can: “Why is it that you commanded us to love our enemies, and you arrange to avenge us on them?” Or is he perhaps going to act against the will of his saints by punishing and condemning those whom they love? No; rather let them turn from this slanderous blindness to God and understand his will in both Testaments, lest they be found on the left side among those to whom the Lord is going to say: “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you did not give me food to eat,” and so on. For these wretches are displeased that God handed over enemies to his people to be killed; and they themselves forbid bread to be given to a beggar, not an enemy but a suppliant. Let them rather understand that there can be punishment without hatred, which few understand; and yet as long as it is not understood, the reader of the books of both Testaments must be tossed about with great labor or error and think the Scriptures contrary to each other. This punishment without hatred the apostles had not yet grasped in their minds when, angry at those who would not receive them as guests, they asked the Lord whether he wished them to call down fire from heaven, as Elijah had done, to consume the inhospitable people. Then the Lord answered them, saying that they did not know whose spirit they were sons of, and that he had come to set free, not to destroy, because they wanted with a hostile spirit to destroy those whom they wished consumed by fire. But afterwards, when they had been filled with the Holy Spirit and made perfect, so that they could now love even their enemies, they received the power of punishing, because they could now punish without hatred. The apostle Peter too used this power, in the book which these people do not accept because it plainly contains the coming of the Paraclete, that is, of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom he sent to those who were mourning when he had ascended from their sight into heaven. For a comforter is sent to the sorrowful, according to that saying of the same Lord: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” He also said: “Then the sons of the bridegroom will mourn, when the bridegroom is taken away from them.” In that book, then, where it is most plainly declared that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord had promised as Comforter, had come, we read that at Peter's sentence people fell down and died, a husband and wife who had dared to lie to the Holy Spirit. These people find fault with this in great blindness, while in the apocrypha they read as a great work both what I mentioned about the apostle Thomas, and that Peter's own daughter was made paralyzed by her father's prayers and a gardener's daughter died at the prayer of Peter himself; and they answer that this was good for them, that the one should be paralyzed and the other die; yet they do not deny that it was done at the apostle's prayers. But who told them that it was not good for the ungodly nations to be killed, which they pretend to marvel at, mocking that they were divinely handed over into the hands of the people of the Jews? And when the apostles did those things not from hatred but with good will, from what do these people prove that the spiritual men who were in that people hated those whom divine justice commanded to be removed from this life through them? Let them rather restrain their rashness and not deceive the unskilled, who either have no leisure to read, or do not want to read, or read with a perverse mind and do not notice that the mercy and the severity of God are both commended in the writings of both Testaments. For about love of an enemy, so that evil is not repaid for evil, is it not read in the old books: “O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid evil to those who repaid me, may I deservedly fall empty before my enemies”? Who would say this, except one who knew that it pleases God that no one should repay evil for evil? But it belongs to the perfect to hate nothing in sinners but the sins, while loving the people themselves; and when they punish, not to punish with the bitterness of cruelty but with the moderation of justice, lest the very letting go of a sin harm the sinner more than the penalty of punishment. Yet righteous men did not do this except by divine authority, lest anyone think he is allowed at random to kill whomever he wishes, or prosecute him at law, or afflict him with any punishments. Sometimes this divine authority is stated openly in the Scriptures, sometimes it is hidden, so that the reader may be instructed by what is plain and exercised by what is obscure. Certainly David received King Saul, his enemy and persecutor, most ungrateful and most hostile, into his power, to do to him what he wished; and he chose to spare rather than to kill. For he had not been commanded to kill, but neither had he been forbidden; indeed he had even heard from God that he might do with impunity whatever he wished to his enemy; and yet he turned so great a power to gentleness. Let someone tell me whom he feared when he would not kill. We cannot say that he feared the man whom he had received into his power, nor God, who had given him. So where there was neither difficulty in killing nor fear, love spared the enemy. See, David the warrior fulfilled the command of Christ which we have received, to love our enemies. And would that these people imitated this, who have twisted the human feeling of mercy into I know not what cruel ravings! For while they believe that bread weeps, which cannot happen, they do not hold it out to a human being whom they see weeping. Perhaps they may say, as the blind usually hurl insane abuse, that David, who spared his enemy, was better than God, who had given him the power to kill; as if God did not know to whom he gave this power. He certainly knew the will of his servant; but so that the love of an enemy which was already known to God in David's heart might become known to other people too for imitation, he gave him the enemy into his power, an enemy whom he did not yet wish killed, because of a certain arrangement of things that was to be fulfilled through him. Thus David's goodness was commended, so that people might have something to love, and Saul's wickedness was put off to a more fitting end, so that people might have something to fear.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “If you listen with your ear to the voice of the Lord your God, blessed are you in your field, blessed are you in your meadow, blessed is the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land and the offspring of your beasts and the herd of your oxen and the flock of your sheep; blessed are you in your coming in and your going out.” They say that this is contradicted in the gospel by: “If anyone wishes to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For what does it profit a person if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?” But by that rule it is shown not to be contrary, by which it must by now be known that fleshly and temporal rewards were fittingly promised to a still fleshly people, yet by the one God to whom all creation, higher and lower, belongs. For certainly Adimantus himself set down a testimony from the gospel where the Lord says: “Do not swear, either by heaven, because it is his throne, or by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet.” This is written in the old books as well: “Heaven is my throne, the earth the footstool of my feet.” What wonder, then, if he gives the goods of his throne to those who serve him spiritually, and the goods of the footstool of his feet to those who serve him in a fleshly way, since the spirit is higher and the flesh lower, as heavenly things are higher and earthly lower? Although all those things, that is, field and meadow and fruit of the womb and fruit of the land and of the beasts and herd of oxen and flock of sheep, can also be understood spiritually; but that discussion is not relevant now. But even in the New Testament itself, whose reward and inheritance belongs to the new man, the Lord nonetheless promises to those very people whom he wants to despise temporal things in order to serve him in the gospel a multiplication of those same things in this age, saying that they will receive a hundredfold in this age and in the age to come eternal life; as it is also said in the Old Scripture: “To the faithful man the whole world is wealth.” Hence the apostle exults, saying: “As having nothing and possessing all things.” If, then, in the New Testament, besides the eternal possession promised to the saints, the multiplication of this possession too, which will pass away, is not withheld, and becomes the richer the more it is held in contempt, how much more ought such to have been the rewards of a fleshly people in the Old Testament, while the one true God, governor of all times, regulated and administered all things according to the time? But lest they think these things are despised only in the books of the New Testament, let them hear the prophet rejecting such happiness and singing that one must flee to the one Lord God. For he says: “From the malignant sword rescue me, and deliver me from the hand of alien sons, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity; whose sons are like young plants established in their youth, their daughters adorned and decked out like the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, overflowing from one to another; their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their outgoings; their oxen fat; there is no breach in the wall, nor going out, nor outcry in their streets. They have called happy the people to whom these things belong; happy is the people whose Lord is its God.” Let them notice, then, how this happiness is mocked in ungodly people, and the whole of blessedness is fixed unshaken in God alone. For they say, “Happy the people to whom these things belong”; but, “Happy the people whose Lord is its God.” As for their also thinking contrary to this passage of the Old Testament what the Lord says, “Everyone who is ashamed of me or my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man too will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father and the praise of his holy angels,” I do not see what it has to do with contempt of temporal things. And if it does apply, in that no one, frightened by the loss of such things, should either blush or fear to confess Christ, what have they to say? For we too say that these things are gifts of God, but lowest gifts, which in comparison with saving confession must be not only lost but even thrown away of one's own accord; yet they were usefully promised by the Lord God to fleshly people who loved them and did not yet grasp the heavenly promises, so that they would not seek them from idols and demons.

On the text in the law: “I am the one who gives riches to my friends and poverty to my enemies.” Against this saying they set what the Lord says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” But why will they not look at other things in the gospel too? For where it is written, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” there follows: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” See, they have the friends of God made rich with the inheritance of the earth. And when that rich man is reduced to such want that he begs the poor man whom he had neglected to let a drop of moisture fall on his parched tongue from the tip of a finger dipped in water, let them understand how the enemies of God become poor, and recognize that this is what is written in the law: “I am the one who gives riches to my friends and poverty to my enemies.” For I showed above that these temporal riches are despised in the Old Scripture too, and whoever wishes to read will find it in countless places. Hence too that text: “Better is a little for the righteous than the many riches of sinners”; and: “The law of your mouth is good to me above thousands of gold and silver”; and: “The judgments of God are true, justified in themselves, more desirable than gold and much precious stone”; and: “Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, and immortal the one who sees prudence. For it is better to acquire her than treasures of gold and silver; she is more precious than the finest stones; no evil resists her; she is well known to all who draw near to her and to those who consider her carefully; and nothing precious is worthy of her”; and: “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came into me. And I preferred her to kingdoms and thrones, and I counted honor nothing in comparison with her. Nor did I compare a precious stone to her, for all gold in comparison with her is a little sand, and silver will be reckoned as mud before her.” If these people either read these things, or did not read them impiously, they would see that everything in the Scriptures of both Testaments, as to what is to be sought and what shunned, what taken up and what rejected, is in agreement and ordered in its own ranks.

On the text in the law: “If you walk in my law and keep my commandments, I will give rains in their season, and the land will bring forth its fruits and the trees their apples, and your vintage will follow your harvests and your sowing your vintage; and you will be satisfied and will sit in peace in your land, and you will sleep, and there will be no one to frighten you; and I will destroy every wild beast from your land, and you will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword; and five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword; and I will come and bless you and multiply you and set you in order. You will eat the old that has grown old, and you will throw out the old before the new.” By now no one should require us to show how fittingly God promised these things to that people. For we have said much on this matter, and anyone to whom it seems little is too slow. But as for their saying that a New Testament text is contrary to this passage too, namely what the Lord says: “Do not carry gold or silver or coins in your belts, no bag for the road, nor two tunics nor shoes nor staff; for the laborer is worthy of his wages”: what wonder if he granted this to the preachers of the gospel? Was the Jewish people called to this ministry? Yet all these things must be examined spiritually, lest the Lord himself seem to the ungodly to have acted against his own commands, since he even had a money box in which money was carried for necessary food. Unless perhaps they will say that having money in belts is a sin, but in a money box it is not a sin! That these things were not commanded but permitted to the apostles is understood from the fact that the apostle Paul earned his food by working with his own hands, not using, as he himself says, the power which the Lord gave to the preachers of the gospel. For what is permitted by the Lord one may also not do; but what is commanded is a sin unless it is done. They also add the rich man to whom God had said, “Fool, this night I will require your soul of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” and they say that this is no less contrary to this chapter of the law; whereas in this case the emptiness of a vain joy was mocked, because he took uncertain things as certain, while for the people of Israel the omnipotence of the one promising made that promise certain. Hence also the apostle Paul, writing to Timothy about the rich of this age, whom he knew to have their place among the members of the Church, speaks thus: “Command the rich of this age not to be haughty, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who provides us with all things abundantly to enjoy: let them do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share, store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.” Who does not understand here that it is not blameworthy to have these things, but to love them and put hope in them, to prefer them or even compare them to truth, righteousness, wisdom, faith, good conscience, and love of God and neighbor, in which every devout soul is rich in its inner places before the eyes of God? But in order that God may be loved, who bestows on those who love him all these invisible and eternal things, that is, gives himself, full of all these, to those who love him; in order, then, that he himself may be loved, even at that time when the fleshly soul, entangled in the affections of the flesh, knows how to desire nothing but earthly and temporal things, it must be persuaded that God gives these things too to human beings, because it is both true and very usefully believed. This was done for the people of Israel through those promises which the wretches most ignorantly deride, so that even in those lowest things they might become accustomed, as best they could, to love God, although fear was more at work there. Yet all those temporal gifts are figures of eternal gifts, and that victory over enemies prefigures the victory over the devil and his angels. And as for their adding, as if contrary to the Old Testament, that the apostle says God delights not in strife and dissension but in peace: let them know that the God proclaimed in those Scriptures is one from whom no one can take away his peace, not such a one as they themselves proclaim, who, fearing that war would break in upon his realms, sent his own members far away to endure foreign wars, and afterwards, conquered and defiled, they could not be set free and cleansed. But in human nature, which slid down to lower things by sin, God so delights in peace that he does not abandon the balance of justice, nor wish the peace he loves to be trampled by sinners, but to be loved by those who strive and grasped by those who conquer; and he promises it in figures to the fleshly and shows it openly to the spiritual.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “Cursed is everyone who has hung on a tree.” Although this question has often been aired by the Manichaeans, I still do not see what is contrary to this saying in what Adimantus thought he should set against it from the gospel, where the Lord says: “If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you possess and distribute to the poor, and take up your cross and follow me.” Here, apart from his naming the cross, he notices nothing contrary to what was said: “Cursed is everyone who has hung on a tree.” As if everyone could take up such a cross and follow the Lord! But the cross taken up when we follow the Lord is the one of which the apostle says: “Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” For by such a cross the old man, that is, the old life which we drew from Adam, is put to death, so that what was voluntary in him became natural in us. The apostle shows this when he says: “We too were once by nature children of wrath, like the rest.” If, then, the old life is from Adam, which is why the old life is marked by the name of the old man, what is absurd in a curse being pronounced against the old man, whom the Lord hung on the tree? For through that very succession he bore mortality, being born mortally of the Virgin Mary, having flesh that was not sinful but nonetheless bore the likeness of sinful flesh, because it could die, and death is from sin. Hence too that text: “Knowing that our old man was crucified together with him, so that the body of sin might be done away with.” So it was not the Lord, through the tongue of Moses the servant of God, but death itself that deserved the curse, death which our Lord did away with by taking it on. So that death hung on the tree which came through the woman to the man by the serpent's persuasion. That is why Moses also lifted up a serpent on a pole in the desert to signify that very death. And since we are healed of deadly desires through faith in the Lord's cross, by which cross death was hung on the tree, those who were poisoned by the bites of serpents were at once healed when they looked on the serpent that was fixed and lifted up on the pole. The Lord himself bore witness to this sacrament, saying: “For just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” And by taking on the most shameful kind of death among human beings, that is, the death of the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ commended his love to us, so that the apostle rightly said, kindling us to love of him: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”; so that Christian freedom might dread not only no death, but no kind of death, as Jewish servitude did.

On the man whom God commanded to be stoned because he was found gathering wood on the Sabbath. When the Lord in the gospel healed a man's withered hand on the Sabbath day, he did a divine work, not a human one; nor did he depart from rest, he who commanded and it was done. And so this deed is not like that of the man gathering wood, who, when he was found doing it on the Sabbath day, was stoned by God's command. Much has already been said about the servile observance of the Sabbath and about the punishment of temporal death. For just as in the time of love the goodness of God is chiefly commended, so in the time of fear his severity is. And since it was not yet fitting, before the Lord's coming, to lay bare to the people the sacraments of the figures of the law, those people were not invited to understand what was signified, but were compelled to fulfill what was commanded; for they did not yet cling to God through the Spirit, but served the law through the flesh. But I wonder that these people lament the man stoned by God's command because he gathered wood against the command of the law, and do not lament the tree withered by Christ's word, which had done nothing against any command, since they believe that a tree has the same kind of soul as a human being.

On the text: “Let your wife be like a flourishing vine and your children like young olive shoots around your table, and you will see your children's children; and you will know that thus is blessed the man who fears the Lord.” The Manichaeans do not understand that this, said figuratively through the prophet, refers to the signification of the Church, and they think that what the Lord says in the gospel about eunuchs who castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is contrary. But we have already discussed husband and wife and eunuchs, as much as was sufficient, in the third chapter.

On the text in Solomon: “Imitate the ant and look at its diligence, for from summertime until winter it gathers food for itself.” The Manichaeans do not understand that this too must be taken spiritually, and they think it is a command that we should store up treasure on earth, or even take care of those barns which people hasten eagerly to fill without any command. And so Adimantus says that the gospel passage where the Lord says, “Do not think about tomorrow,” is opposed to this saying. But neither do they understand that this refers to our not loving temporal things, nor fearing that necessities may fail us, nor serving either God or human beings for the sake of acquiring them. For if it was said so that bread should not be kept until tomorrow, this is fulfilled rather by the vagrants of Rome whom they call pasgivi, who, once their belly is filled with the daily ration, either give away at once what is left or throw it away, than by the Lord's disciples, who, walking on earth with the very Lord of heaven and earth, had a money box, or by the apostle Paul, who, though he despised all earthly things, still managed what was necessary for the present life in such a way that he even gave a command about widows, saying: “If any believer has widows, let him provide sufficiently for them, so that the Church may not be burdened, so that it may suffice for real widows.” But that text about the ant is set down so that, just as it gathers in summer what will feed it in winter, so every Christian, in a time of calm, which summer signifies, may gather the word of God, so that in adversity and tribulations, which are signified by the name of winter, he may have something by which to live spiritually. For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And if they are disturbed that the ant hides what it gathers in the earth, let them be angry also at that treasure which the Lord says was found in a field.

On the text in Hosea: “Give them an empty womb and dry breasts; put to death the seed of their womb, so that they may not give birth.” This prophetic utterance too is certainly figurative. For they do not understand a fleshly belly in the gospel either when they read: “Rivers of living water will flow from his belly.” And the apostle had certain breasts when he said, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food,” and again, “I became a little one among you, like a nurse cherishing her children.” And he is in labor again with the Galatians, who were turning aside to other things, until Christ is formed in them. And so what Adimantus set down from the gospel does not conflict with this prophetic saying: that in the resurrection from the dead they will neither marry nor take wives nor die, but are like the angels of God. For this is certainly what the eunuchs too receive, of whom Isaiah speaks: “A renowned place, much better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name,” he says. So let these people not think that such a reward is promised to the saints only in the gospel; and let them understand that the empty womb and dry breasts and the seed put to death so that they may not give birth were said of those of whom the apostle says: “For as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these too oppose the truth, men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; but they will not progress further, for their folly will be plain to all, as theirs also was.” When, then, they will not progress further, then they will have an empty womb and dry breasts and their seed put to death. Let these people deign to look at themselves in this saying as in a mirror.

On the text in the prophet Amos: “Can it happen that two walking on the road do not know each other at all, and that a lion returns to its cub without prey? Will a bird fall to the ground without a fowler? Do they set a trap without cause, to catch nothing? Will the trumpet sound in a city and the people not be afraid? So too no evil is done in a city which the Lord will not do.” Evil in this passage is to be understood not as sin but as punishment. For evil is spoken of in two ways: one that a person does, the other that he suffers. What he does is sin; what he suffers is punishment. So the prophet was speaking of punishments when he said this. For since divine providence regulates and governs all things, a person does evil willingly in such a way that he suffers evil unwillingly. These people accuse the prophet who says this as if they had not read in the gospel: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them falls to the ground without the will of your Father?” So God does evil in the sense that it is not evil to God himself, but to those on whom he takes vengeance. So he himself, as far as he is concerned, does good, because everything just is good, and that vengeance is just. And so what Adimantus objects that the Lord said is not contrary: “A good tree makes good fruit, but a bad tree makes bad fruit.” For although hell is evil to the one condemned, the justice of God is nonetheless good, and it is itself fruit from a good tree. That man, by the evils of his sins, has stored up wrath for himself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will repay each according to his works. Yet these two trees are most plainly set as a likeness of two kinds of people, that is, the just and the unjust, because unless someone changes his will, he cannot do good. That this has been placed in our power he teaches in another place, where he says: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.” For he says this to those who thought they could speak good things while they were bad, that is, bear good fruit while they were bad trees. For he adds: “Hypocrites, how can you speak good things when you are evil?” So a bad tree cannot bear good fruit; but from bad it can become good, so as to bear good fruit. “For you were once darkness,” he says, “but now light in the Lord.” As if he said: you were once bad trees, and so then you could bear only bad fruit; but now you are light in the Lord, that is, having now become good trees, yield good fruit. This is what follows, when he says: “Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light is in all righteousness and truth), testing what is pleasing to the Lord.” For in that very chapter of the gospel, if Adimantus had not raged with zeal for ill will, he could have noticed in what sense God is said to do evil. For there the Lord says, as this man too cited: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” These are the evils which God does, that is, punishments for sinners: that he will throw into the fire trees which, persisting in wickedness, refused to become good, since this is evil for the trees themselves. But God, as I have often said, does not yield bad fruit, because the punishment of sin is the fruit of justice.

On the text written in the prophet Isaiah: “I am God, who make peace and establish evils.” This too is resolved by the same rule. For Adimantus does not find fault with God's saying, “I make peace,” but with his saying, “I establish evils.” Yet the apostle Paul treated these two things in the same way in one place, and more fully, saying: “See, then, the goodness and the severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but goodness toward you, if you remain in goodness; otherwise you too will be cut off. And they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again.” In this apostolic discourse there clearly appears both the goodness of God, according to which Isaiah said, “I am God, who make peace,” and the severity, according to which he said, “I establish evils.” At the same time he shows that it is in our power whether we deserve to be grafted in by his goodness or cut off by his severity. So the gospel is not contrary to Isaiah, as Adimantus thinks, or rather wants it to be thought, where the Lord says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” For from that very part he ought to have recognized that Isaiah too knew that peacemakers are sons of God, since God said through him: “I am the one who makes peace.” But while he fixes his eye on the other part so as to understand it wrongly, he blinded himself to this one. And if someone else, similarly blind, wished to say that the Old Testament is good, where the Lord says, “I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as that he turn and live,” but that the New Testament is evil, where Christ says, “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels”: would he not, falling into the pit, drag down with him into the blindness of ignorance, with doubled malice, all the untaught and those ignorant of the Scriptures who followed him? But one who reads with a devout eye finds in the New Testament too what these people accuse in the Old, and in the Old what they praise in the New.

On the text in Isaiah: “And it happened in the year in which King Uzziah died: I saw the Lord sitting on a most high throne; and the house was full of his glory, and around him stood Seraphim having six wings each, and with two they covered his face and with two his feet.” Against this passage Adimantus sets what the apostle says: “To the invisible King of the ages be honor and praise forever.” In this question we must ask what led him both to leave out, in that vision of Isaiah, the two wings with which the Seraphim flew, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,” and not to quote the apostle's words in full. For the apostle said: “To the King of the ages, invisible, incorruptible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” Was he perhaps afraid that the mention of the Trinity would commend the prophet to the reader, and that the reader would suspect something great was hidden there? For “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” is said three times. And in the apostle he perhaps saw that, if he had said “to the incorruptible God,” the reply would be made to him which we now make to these people: what then was the race of darkness going to do to an incorruptible God if he had refused to fight with it? Or perhaps he had read faulty manuscripts, or the copy in which we read Adimantus himself is faulty; one need not argue longer about a doubtful matter. But now we must ask how both the prophet said that he saw God on a most high throne, and the apostle Paul spoke truly in calling God invisible. So I ask these people whether invisible things can be seen. They say they can: why then do they raise a false charge if the prophet saw the invisible God? But if they say they cannot, let them rather raise a false charge against the apostle himself, if they dare, who says: “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are seen, being understood through the things that have been made.” He himself said that they are invisible, and he himself in turn said, “they are seen.” Are they not compelled here to admit that they are invisible to bodily eyes but visible to the mind? So too the prophet saw God, who is invisible bodily, not bodily but spiritually. For many kinds of vision are found in the holy Scriptures. One is according to the eyes of the body, as Abraham saw three men under the oak of Mamre, and Moses the fire in the bush, and the disciples the Lord transfigured on the mountain between Moses and Elijah, and other such things. The second is according to the spirit, by which we imagine the things we perceive through the body; for when this part of us is taken up by God, many things are revealed to it not through the eyes of the body or the ears or any other fleshly sense, but things similar to them, as Peter saw that dish let down from heaven with various animals. Of this kind is also this vision of Isaiah, which the ungodly most ignorantly find fault with. For no bodily form bounds God; but just as many things are said figuratively, not properly, so also many things are shown figuratively. The third kind of vision is according to the gaze of the mind, by which truth and wisdom are seen when understood; without this kind, the two I explained before are either fruitless or even lead into error. For when the things divinely shown either to the bodily senses or to that part of the soul which receives images of bodily things are not only perceived in these ways but also understood by the mind, then the revelation is complete. Of this third kind is that vision which I mentioned when the apostle says: “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are seen, being understood through the things that have been made.” That God may be seen by this vision, hearts are cleansed by the devotion of faith and by God's action of the best morals. For what did it profit King Belshazzar that he saw before his eyes a hand writing on the wall? Since he could not add the gaze of the mind to that vision, he still sought to see what he had seen. But Daniel, endowed with that keenness of light by which these things are understood, saw with his mind what the king had seen with his body. Again, with that part of the soul which receives images of bodies King Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream; and since he did not have an eye of the mind fit to see better what he had seen, that is, to understand what he had seen, he sought another's sight, namely that of the same Daniel, to interpret his vision; yet from him, as he revealed it, he demanded that the dream itself be told him too, so that he might give him sure belief. Daniel, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, saw both what the king had seen in dreams, with that part by which images of bodies are received, and what it signified, with his mind. But he is not a prophet of the true and highest God who sees visions divinely presented either with the body alone or with that part of the spirit by which images of bodies are received, and does not see with the mind. Yet in the Scriptures they are mostly found set down as they were seen, not also as they were understood, so that the vision of the mind, in which the whole fruit lies, might be kept for the exercise of readers. But from many things that are written openly it is made clear to us how they understood the things which they set down in their books as they were shown to them figuratively. For figurative showings belong to those two kinds of vision; but to the vision of the mind, that is, of understanding, belongs the simple and proper revelation of things understood and certain. Yet all these kinds the Holy Spirit of the highest and unchangeable Wisdom presents and regulates by wonderful and inexpressible distributions. But wretched are these people who raise a false charge against the prophet for saying that he saw God, objecting the apostle's saying in which he called him invisible. For if someone else set against this apostolic word the word of the gospel, since the Lord says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” how will they answer that the invisible can be seen? For they press the unskilled with a word, and even if they know in what sense God is called invisible, they fear that it may become known. So great is the ruin of minds which, when they want to defeat a person, are defeated by error.