Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.67–22.78

For what else did the Spirit of God see than the depths of his heart, when, rebuked by the prophet, he said, “I have sinned,” and at once, at this one word, deserved to hear that he had received pardon? For what, but for eternal salvation? For the discipline of the fatherly scourge, according to God's threat, was not omitted in his case, so that, having confessed, he might be freed for ever, and, afflicted, he might be proved in time. And it was no ordinary strength of faith, nor a small sign of a meek and obedient mind, that when he had heard from the prophet that God had forgiven him, and yet the things that had been threatened came to pass in consequence, he did not say that he had been deceived by the prophet's lie, nor murmur against God as though he had pronounced a false pardon of his sins. For the deeply holy man, lifting up his soul not against God but to God, understood how much eternal punishment his sins deserved unless the Lord were merciful to him confessing and repenting; and while he was burned with temporal corrections for them, he saw that both pardon remained for him and medicine was not neglected. But why did Saul, rebuked by Samuel, though he too said “I have sinned,” not deserve to hear what David heard, that the Lord had forgiven him? Is there respect of persons with God? Far from it. But in a like voice, which human sense heard, there was an unlike breast, which the divine eye distinguished. What are we taught by such examples except that the kingdom of heaven is within us, and that we ought to worship God from our inmost being, so that the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart, not so that a people honours him with their lips while their heart is far from him; and that we should not dare to judge of men, whose inner parts we cannot see, otherwise than God, who can, and cannot be deceived or corrupted? Since so lofty an authority of the divine Scripture contains his most evident verdict on David, is not human rashness that thinks otherwise much to be laughed at, or rather lamented? For we must believe those divine books concerning ancient men which so long ago foretold things that are now seen present.

What else do we learn in the gospel, when the same words are heard from Peter confessing Christ the Son of God as from the demons, who utter like words but with a far unlike heart? So, in a like voice, Peter's faith is praised and the uncleanness of the demons is restrained. By whom, but by him who knew how to look into the inner roots of those voices, not with a human ear but with a divine mind, and to distinguish them without any error? For how many other men too say that Christ is the Son of the living God, and yet are not compared with Peter's merits—not only those who will say on that day, “Lord, Lord,” and will hear, “Depart from me,” but also those who will be set apart on the right, among whom very many never denied Christ even once, nor disapproved his passion for our salvation, nor compelled the Gentiles to live like Jews, and yet will appear unequal to Peter, who did these things, as he sits on the twelve thrones and judges not only the twelve tribes but also the angels? So too many who have desired no one's wife, and pursued to death no husband of a woman desired, yet cannot have David's merit with God, though he did those things. So much does it matter what displeases each one in himself, and how much, so that it is utterly rooted out, and what fruitful and rich growth springs up in its place with great productiveness; for to the farmer too those fields are more pleasing which, even after great thorns have been rooted out, bring forth a hundredfold, than those which never had any thorns and scarcely reach thirtyfold.

So too Moses, the servant of God most faithful in all his house, minister of the holy law and of the commandment holy, just, and good, to whom the apostle bears witness—for these words I have mentioned are his—minister also of the sacraments, not yet bestowing salvation but still promising the Saviour, which the Saviour himself also confirms, saying: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me” (on which, in its place, we have argued as far as seemed sufficient against the impudent slanders of the Manichaeans)—this Moses, then, the servant of the living God, the true God, the highest God, maker of heaven and earth, not out of something alien but out of nothing, not under the pressure of necessity but from overflowing goodness, not through the punishment of his own member but through the power of his Word; this Moses, I say, humble in refusing so great a ministry, submissive in undertaking it, faithful in keeping it, energetic in carrying it out, vigilant in ruling the people, vehement in correcting, ardent in loving, patient in bearing, who for those over whom he was set placed himself before God when he consulted him and set himself against him when he was angry—this man, so great and of such a kind, far be it from us to weigh by the slandering mouth of Faustus; but rather by the mouth of the plainly truthful God, who truly knew the man he had made, since he also both recognizes as judge the sins of men, which he himself does not commit, in those who deny them, and pardons them as father in those who confess them. Wholly from his mouth we both love and admire his servant Moses, and imitate him as far as we can, though we are far inferior to his merits, even though we have killed or plundered no Egyptian and waged no war; of which he did the one by the bent of a future defender, the others by the command laid upon him by God.

To pass over for the present that, when he struck the Egyptian, although God had not commanded him, yet in his prophetic person it was divinely permitted for this purpose, that it should foreshadow something to come (which I am not now treating), but discussing those deeds altogether as if they had signified nothing, and consulting that eternal law, I find that a man ought not to have been killed by one who held no ordained authority, however injurious and wicked he was. Yet souls capable of virtue and fertile often put forth beforehand vices by which they show this very thing, for what virtue they are best suited, if they are cultivated by precepts. For just as farmers, when they see land producing great weeds, though useless, declare it suitable for grain; and where they see fern, though they know it must be rooted out, understand it fit for strong vines; and when they see a mountain wooded with wild olives, do not doubt that with cultivation it will be useful for olives: so that movement of the mind, by which Moses, not observing the order of authority, could not bear that his foreign brother should suffer wrong from a wicked citizen unavenged, was not useless for the fruits of virtues, but, still uncultivated, put forth signs that were indeed faulty, but of great fertility. Finally, he himself, through his angel, called Moses with divine voices on Mount Sinai, that through him the people of Israel might be freed from Egypt, and prepared him by the miracle of the vision in the bush burning and not consumed, and by the Lord's words, for the fruit of obedience; he who also called Saul, as he persecuted the church, from heaven, cast him down, raised him up, filled him—as it were struck, pruned, grafted, made fruitful. For that savagery of Paul, when, in zeal for the traditions of the fathers, he persecuted the church, thinking he was offering service to God, was like a wild growth, a vice, but a sign of great productiveness. From the same source was that act of Peter's, when, drawing his sword and wishing to defend the Lord, he cut off the ear of a persecutor; which deed the Lord checked rather menacingly, saying: “Put back your sword; for whoever uses the sword will fall by the sword.” And he uses the sword who arms himself against someone's blood without any higher and lawful authority either commanding or permitting it. For the Lord had indeed ordered his disciples to carry the steel, but had not ordered them to strike. What then is unfitting if Peter after this sin was made shepherd of the church, as Moses after striking the Egyptian was made ruler of that synagogue? For both exceeded the rule of justice not from detestable savagery but from a correctable spirit; both sinned from hatred of another's wickedness, but the one from love of a brother, the other from love of the Lord, though still fleshly. This vice was to be pruned or rooted out; yet so great a heart was to be cultivated for bearing virtues, as land for crops.

What, then, does Faustus object about the spoiling of the Egyptians, not knowing what he says? In doing this Moses was so far from sinning that he would have sinned by not doing it. For God had commanded it, who certainly knows, not only according to men's deeds but also according to their hearts, what each ought to suffer, or through whom. That people was still fleshly and taken up with desire for earthly things; and the Egyptians were sacrilegious and unjust: for, using that gold, that is, God's creature, badly to the creator's injury, they served their idols with it, and they had unjustly and harshly afflicted foreigners with unpaid labour. Both, then, were deserving: these, that such things should be commanded them; those, that they should suffer such things. And perhaps, according to their own wishes and thoughts, the Hebrews were permitted rather than commanded to do these things; but God wished to make his permission known to them through his servant Moses, when he ordered him to tell them. It may be, however, that there are other most hidden reasons why this was divinely said to that people; but we must yield to divine commands by obeying, not resist them by arguing. The apostle said: “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?” Whether, then, the reason is the one I have given, or some other lies hidden in the secret and hidden ordering of God, why he told that people through Moses to ask from the Egyptians, as a loan, things they were to carry off, this I affirm: that it was said neither in vain nor unjustly, and that it was not lawful for Moses to do otherwise than God had said; so that the counsel of commanding was with the Lord, and the obedience of carrying out with the servant.

“But,” he says, “the true and good God is in no way to be believed to have commanded such things.” On the contrary, no one rightly commands such things except the true and good God, who alone knows what should be commanded to each, and alone allows no one to suffer anything unfitting. Otherwise, let that ignorant and false goodness of the human heart contradict Christ also, lest by the command of the good God the ungodly should suffer some evil, when he is going to say to the angels: “Gather first the weeds and bind them in bundles for burning”—he who nevertheless forbade the servants who wished to do this very thing out of season, saying: “Lest perhaps, when you wish to gather the weeds, you root up the wheat with them.” So only the true and good God knows what, when, to whom, and through whom he commands or permits something to be done. This human—not goodness, but plain vanity—could also contradict the same Lord when he granted the harmful desire of the demons who wished and asked to go into the swine, especially since the Manichaeans believed that not only swine but even small and despised animals have human souls. Rejecting and casting off that vanity, it is nevertheless established that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, and therefore the true and good God, granted to the desire of the demons the death of other people's cattle, the destruction of animals of whatever kind, and heavy loss to men. And who so mad as to say that he could not have kept them away from men even if he had not wished to grant their harmful will the destruction of the swine? Further, if the cruel and wicked desire of spirits condemned and already destined to eternal fire was let loose to what it had inclined to by the creator and orderer of all natures, by a hidden but everywhere just governance, what is absurd if the Egyptians deserved to be deprived by the Hebrews—men ruling unjustly, by free men, to whom they were even debtors for the wages of such hard and unjust labours—of earthly things, which they were even using in sacrilegious rites to the injury of the creator? Yet if Moses had ordered this of his own accord, or the Hebrews had done it of their own accord, they would certainly have sinned; although they perhaps did sin, not indeed in doing what God had either commanded or permitted, but in desiring such things. But that they were permitted to do this by divine dispensation, they were permitted by the just and good judgment of him who knows how by punishments either to restrain the wicked or to instruct the subject, and to give stronger precepts to the sounder and to appoint certain medicinal stages for the weaker. Moses, however, is to be charged neither with greed for those things desired, nor with contumacy in despising any divine commands.

For that eternal law, which commands the natural order to be preserved and forbids it to be disturbed, has placed certain deeds in a kind of middle position for men, so that in taking them upon oneself boldness is rightly blamed, while in carrying them out at command obedience is rightly praised. So much does it matter in the natural order what is done by whom, and under whom each acts. If Abraham had sacrificed his son of his own accord, what would he have appeared but horrible and insane? But at God's command, what but faithful and devoted? Truth itself cries this out so loudly that Faustus, frightened by its voice, though seeking with tooth and nail what to say against Abraham himself, to the point of coming to slanderous lies, still did not dare to find fault with this—unless perhaps so noble a deed did not occur to his mind, which, even unread and unsought, would come to mind, and which, sung in so many tongues and painted in so many places, would strike ears and eyes even if they pretended not to notice. Therefore, if in killing his son a spontaneous impulse is found accursed, but obedient service at God's command not only blameless but even praiseworthy, why, Faustus, do you blame Moses for spoiling the Egyptians? If the apparent wickedness of the man doing it provokes you, let the divine authority of the One commanding it frighten you. Or are you ready to find fault even with God himself for willing such things to be done? “Get behind me, then, Satan; for you do not mind the things of God, but the things of men.” And would that you had been worthy to hear this, as Peter was, and had afterwards preached what you now blame in God with feeble sense, as he afterwards proclaimed to the Gentiles with glorious preaching what at first, when the Lord willed it to happen, displeased him.

Therefore, if human hardness, and a will depraved and perverse in matters of right, now at last understands that it makes a very great difference whether something is done by human desire or rashness, or in obedience to the command of God, who knows what, when, and to whom he permits or commands, and what it befits each to do and suffer, let it neither wonder at nor shudder at the wars waged by Moses; because in them too he followed divine commands and was not cruel but obedient; nor was God cruel when he commanded these things, but he rendered to the deserving what they deserved and frightened those who deserved it. For what is blamed in war? Is it that those who will die some time die, so that those who will live may be subdued in peace? To find fault with this belongs to the timid, not to the religious. The desire to harm, the cruelty of revenge, an unpeaceful and implacable mind, savagery in rebelling, the lust for domination, and whatever is like these—these are what are rightly blamed in wars; and generally, so that these may also be rightly punished, wars themselves are undertaken by good men against the violence of those who resist, at the command either of God or of some lawful authority, when they find themselves in that order of human affairs in which that very order rightly binds them either to command such a thing or to obey in such things. Otherwise John, when soldiers came to him to be baptized, saying, “And what shall we do?”, would have answered them: “Throw away your arms, leave that military service, strike, wound, cut down no one.” But because he knew that when they did these things in military service they were not murderers but ministers of the law, and not avengers of their own injuries but defenders of public safety, he answered them: “Extort from no one, falsely accuse no one, be content with your wages.” But since the Manichaeans are accustomed openly to blaspheme John, let them hear the Lord Jesus Christ himself commanding that this wage be paid to Caesar which John says ought to suffice the soldier: “Render,” he says, “to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” For taxes are paid for this purpose, that wages may be provided to the soldier who is needed because of wars. Rightly too he praised the faith of that centurion who said, “For I too am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to one, Go, and he goes, and to another, Come, and he comes, and to my servant, Do this, and he does it,” and did not order him to desert that military service. But to argue now about just and unjust wars would be long and unnecessary.

For it matters for what causes and on whose authority men undertake to wage wars; yet that natural order, suited to the peace of mortals, requires that the authority and decision to undertake war rest with the ruler, while the soldiers owe the service of carrying out military commands to the peace and common safety. And a war undertaken to be waged on God's authority it is not right to doubt is rightly undertaken, whether to frighten or to crush or to subdue the pride of mortals; since not even a war waged by human greed can do any harm, not only to the incorruptible God, but even to his saints; rather it is found even to benefit them, for exercising patience, humbling the soul, and bearing fatherly discipline. For no one has any power over them unless it has been given him from above. For there is no power except from God, whether commanding or permitting. Since, then, a righteous man, if he happens to serve as a soldier under a human king, even a sacrilegious one, can rightly fight at his command, keeping the order of civic peace—when what he is commanded either is certainly not against God's precept or it is not certain whether it is, so that perhaps the iniquity of commanding makes the king guilty, while the order of serving shows the soldier innocent—how much more innocently is he engaged in the conduct of wars who wages war at the command of God, who, as no one who serves him is unaware, cannot command anything evil!

But if they think God could not have commanded war to be waged because afterwards the Lord Jesus Christ said, “But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the left also,” let them understand that this readiness is not in the body but in the heart; for there is the holy chamber of virtue, which dwelt also in those ancient righteous men, our fathers. But the order of the dispensation of events and the distribution of times required that it should first appear that even earthly goods themselves, to which human kingdoms and victories over enemies are reckoned, and for the sake of which above all the city of the ungodly, spread through the world, is accustomed to supplicate idols and demons, belong only to the power and decision of the one true God. Hence the Old Testament also covered the secret of the kingdom of heaven, to be opened at the fitting time, with earthly promises, and in a way shaded it more darkly. But when the fullness of time came for the New Testament to be revealed, which was veiled by the figures of the Old, it had now to be shown by evident testimony that there is another life for which this life ought to be despised, and another kingdom for which the hostility of all earthly kingdoms ought to be borne most patiently. Accordingly, those through whose confessions, sufferings, and deaths it pleased God to bear witness to this are called martyrs, which in Latin means witnesses. Their number flourished so greatly that, if Christ—who called Saul from heaven and, having made him a sheep out of a wolf, sent him into the midst of wolves—had wished to arm them, gathered together, and help them as they fought, as he helped the Hebrew fathers, what nations would have resisted? What kingdoms would not have yielded? But so that a most glorious testimony might be borne to the truth, by which it now had to be taught that God is to be served not for temporal happiness in this life but for eternal happiness after this life, what is commonly called unhappiness had to be undergone and borne for the sake of that happiness. So in the fullness of time the Son of God, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, made of the seed of David according to the flesh, sends his disciples as sheep into the midst of wolves, and warns them not to fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; he promises also that the integrity of the body itself will be renewed, even to the restoration of a hair; he calls Peter's sword back into its sheath, restores the enemy's severed ear to its former shape, says that he could have commanded legions of angels to destroy his enemies, were it not that the cup had to be drunk which his Father's will had given; he drinks it first, and passes it to those who follow; he reveals the virtue of patience by his precept and confirms it by his example. Therefore God raised him from the dead and gave him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. So the patriarchs and prophets reigned here, so that it might be shown that God gives and takes away these kingdoms; the apostles and martyrs did not reign here, so that the kingdom of heaven might rather be set forth as to be desired. The former waged royal wars, so that it might appear that such victories too are granted by God's will; the latter were killed without resisting, so that they might teach that it is a better victory to be killed for the faith of the truth. Although there too the prophets knew how to die for the truth, as the Lord himself says: “From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah.” And after there began to be fulfilled what was prophesied in the psalm, under the figure of Solomon—which in Latin means “peaceful”—about the Lord Christ (for he is our peace): “And all the kings of the earth shall worship him; all nations shall serve him,” Christian emperors too, placing full confidence of godliness in Christ, won a most glorious victory over sacrilegious enemies, who had put their hope in the rites of idols and demons, when, by most plain and well-known proofs, of which some have already committed a written record to memory, the soothsayings of the demons deceived the one side and the predictions of the saints strengthened the other.

But if it seems strange to these empty men that God then commanded one thing to the ministers of the Old Testament, in which the grace of the New was veiled, and another to the preachers of the New Testament, in which the obscurity of the Old was unveiled, let them attend to the Lord Christ himself changing what he had said and saying something else: “When I sent you,” he says, “without purse and bag and sandals, did you lack anything?” And they said: “Nothing.” He said to them, therefore: “But now let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag; and let him who has none sell his tunic and buy a sword.” Certainly, if these men found these different things in the two separate Testaments, Old and New, they would cry out that this too shows the two Testaments to be contrary to each other. What, then, will they answer now, when the same Lord himself says: “Before, I sent you without purse and bag and sandals, and you lacked nothing; but now let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag, and let him who has a tunic sell it and buy a sword”? Do they now understand how, through no inconstancy in him who commands, but by the reason of him who dispenses, precepts or counsels or permissions are changed according to the difference of times? For if they say that this about taking a purse and bag and buying a sword was spoken for the sake of a certain mystery, why do they not admit that, for the sake of a certain mystery, the same one God then commanded the prophets to wage wars and now forbade the apostles? For in what we have recalled from the gospel there were not only the Lord's words, but the deeds of the obedient disciples followed too. For then they went without purse and bag and lacked nothing, as his question and their answer declared; and now, when he commanded them about buying a sword, they said to him: “Look, here are two swords.” And he answered: “It is enough.” Hence Peter too was found armed when he cut off the persecutor's ear; where his spontaneous boldness is checked, because, though he had been ordered to carry steel, he had not been ordered to strike. The Lord's will was certainly hidden, why he commanded weapons to be carried which he did not wish them to use. Nevertheless, it belonged to him to command with reason, and to them to carry out his commands without question.

It is, then, by slanderous ignorance that Moses is blamed for waging wars; he would have deserved less blame if he had waged them of his own accord than if he had not waged them when God commanded. But to dare to blame God himself for commanding such things, or not to believe that a just and good God could command such things, belongs to a man—to put it mildly—unable to think that, for divine providence, which reaches through all things highest and lowest, what arises is not new nor does what dies perish, but each thing, in its own order whether of natures or of merits, gives way, succeeds, or remains; and that the right will of men is joined to the divine law, while disordered desire is restrained by the order of the divine law, so that neither does the good man will anything other than what is commanded, nor can the bad man do more than is permitted—and in such a way, indeed, that he cannot do with impunity what he has unjustly willed. And so, in all the things that human weakness shudders at or fears, only iniquity is rightly condemned; the rest are either the dues of natures or the deserts of faults. A man becomes unjust when he loves for their own sake things to be taken up for the sake of something else, and seeks for the sake of something else things to be loved for their own sake. For so, as far as in him lies, he disturbs in himself the natural order which the eternal law commands to be preserved. And a man becomes just when he seeks to use things for no other end than that for which they were divinely appointed, and to enjoy God himself for his own sake, and himself and his friend in God himself for the sake of that same God. For he loves his friend for God's sake who loves the love of God in his friend. Neither iniquity nor justice would be in our power unless it were in the will. Further, if it were not in our power, no reward and no punishment would be just: which no one thinks unless he is out of his mind. But ignorance and weakness, so that a man either does not know what he ought to will, or cannot do all that he wills, come from a hidden order of punishments and from those inscrutable judgments of God, with whom there is no iniquity. For the sin of Adam has been made known to us by the faithful word of God; and it is truly written both that in him all die and that through him sin entered this world, and through sin death. And that, from this punishment, the body is corrupted and weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things, is most true and most familiar to us; and it is certain that only merciful grace frees from this just punishment. Hence the apostle groans and cries out: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But what the distribution of God judging and showing mercy is—why one is thus and another thus—happens for hidden causes, yet just ones. Yet we are not therefore ignorant that all these things happen by the judgment or mercy of God, though the measures and numbers and weights are placed in secret by which all things are arranged by God, the creator of all that exists by nature, and not the author, yet the orderer, even of sins; so that those things which would not be sins unless they were against nature are so judged and ordered that they are not allowed to disturb or disfigure the nature of the universe, being assigned to the places and conditions of their deserts. This being so, and since, through this secret of God's judgments and the movements of human wills, some are corrupted by the same prosperity which others use temperately, and some fail in the same adversities in which others advance, and since human and mortal life itself is a temptation on earth, which of men knows whom it profits or harms, in peace, to reign or to serve or to be at leisure or to die, and, in war, to command or to fight or to conquer or to be killed? While yet this is certain: that whom it profits, it profits only by divine kindness, and whom it harms, it harms only by divine judgment.