Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.91–22.98

As for his spoiling the Egyptians at the command of the Lord his God, who commands nothing but what is most just, what it prefigured I recall having set down already, as far as it occurred to me then, in certain books which I entitled On Christian Teaching: that by the gold, silver, and clothing of the Egyptians are signified certain branches of learning which are learned with no useless study in the very custom of the Gentiles. But whether it signifies this, or that precious souls from those very Gentiles, like vessels of gold and silver, together with their bodies—which the clothing signifies—join themselves to the people of God, so that they may be freed together from this world as from Egypt: whether this or that or something else was figured by it, it is certain, to those who read these writings with godliness, that those commands, deeds, and writings were not in vain nor without foretelling of things to come.

Now, to go through all the wars that were waged by Moses would be too long. Let it suffice, then, that concerning that war waged against Amalek I have already set out earlier in this same work, in which I am answering Faustus, as far as seemed sufficient for the task undertaken, what it foretold as prophecy and what mystery it contained. Let us now look at that in which either the enemies of these writings or those without any learning are accustomed to charge Moses with the vice of cruelty: which Faustus did not set down expressly when he said that he both commanded and did many cruel things. But because I know what they are accustomed to brandish most of all, and invidiously, I mentioned it myself and defended it above, so that neither the Manichaeans themselves, if they wished to be corrected, nor anyone else among the ignorant or ungodly might think there was any crime in that deed. Now, however, we must ask what prophetic meaning it also had that he ordered many of those who had made themselves an idol in his absence to be killed, without any distinction of kinship. It is easy to understand that the killing of those men signifies the killing of such vices as those by which they slid into that idolatry. For against such vices the psalm bids us rage when it says: “Be angry, and do not sin.” Against such vices the apostle bids us rage when he says: “Put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is the service of idols.”

But what is meant by what he did first, burning the calf itself with fire, grinding it to pieces, scattering it in water, and giving it to the people to drink, calls for greater attention in searching out its meaning. For if he broke the tablets, which he had received written by the finger of God, that is, by the working of the Holy Spirit, because he judged them unworthy to have them read to them; if, finally, in order that that calf might be utterly abolished from among them, he burned it, ground it, scattered it in water, and sank it—why did he also give it to this people to drink? Whom would this deed not rouse to seek and understand its prophetic meaning? Let there occur, then, to attentive minds the devil's body, as it were, in the calf—that is, men in all nations whose head, that is, author, for these sacrileges is the devil; golden for this reason, because the rites of idolatry seem as it were instituted by wise men. Of them the apostle says: “For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; claiming to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents.” From this so-called wisdom comes this golden calf, such figures as even the leading men and, as it were, the learned of the Egyptians were accustomed to worship. By this calf, then, is signified the whole body, that is, the whole society of Gentiles given to idolatry. This sacrilegious society the Lord Christ burns with that fire of which he says in the gospel, “I came to send fire on the earth,” so that, since there is no one who hides himself from its heat, when the Gentiles believe in him the devilish form in them may be dissolved by the fire of his power. Then that whole body is ground down, that is, cut away from that fusion of evil conspiracy, it is humbled by the word of truth, and, ground down, is put into water, so that the Israelites, that is, the preachers of the gospel, may transfer them by baptism into their own members, that is, into the Lord's body. To one of these Israelites, Peter, it was said of these very Gentiles: “Kill and eat.” If “kill and eat,” why not also “grind and drink”? So that calf, by the fire of zeal, the edge of the word, and the water of baptism, was rather swallowed up by those whom it was trying to swallow up.

If, then, these passages of the Scriptures too, on account of which the heretics slander those same Scriptures, when searched out and, as it were, questioned, answer that the more obscure they seem, the more wonderful are the treasures of mysteries hidden in them, how much more ought the blasphemous mouths of the ungodly to fall wholly silent when they are stopped by the plainest truth, against which, with choked breath, they find nothing to mutter, and, wretched men, would rather have their throats blocked by its manifestation than their breasts filled with its sweetness! All these things, then, sound of Christ; that Head, which has now ascended into heaven, and this his Body, which labours on earth until the end, was what the whole intent of those who wrote the truly sacred writings was in travail with; nor is anything narrated in the texture of the prophetic books to be believed not to signify something of things to come, except what was put there so that, as it were, those things might be bound together which foretell that King and his people, whether by proper or by figurative expressions or events. For just as in lyres and musical instruments of that kind not everything that is touched gives out a musical sound, but only the strings, while the other things in the whole body of the lyre were made so that there might be something to which those strings might be fastened, from which and to which they might be stretched, which the craftsman is going to tune and strike for the sweetness of the song: so in these prophetic narratives, which are selected by the prophetic spirit from the deeds of men, either they already sound something by signifying things to come, or, if they signify nothing of the kind, they are inserted so that there may be something by which the signifying ones, like the sounding ones, may be connected.

But if the heretics will not accept these allegorical narratives of events as they are expounded by us, or even contend that they signify nothing but what they literally say, there is no struggling with men who say, “It does not taste to my palate as you say it tastes to yours,” provided that the things divinely commanded are believed or understood either to form morals and godliness, or to signify something figuratively, or rather both than neither; provided also that the very things understood to be said or done figuratively are referred to the same good morals and godliness. And so, even if our understanding or reasoning or opinion about these figures in events displeases the Manichaeans or anyone else, let this suffice: that our fathers, to whom God bears witness of a good life and of obedience to his precepts, are defended by that rule of truth which can displease only depraved and twisted hearts; and that that Scripture to which the perversity of that error is hostile, in whatever deeds of men it has praised or rebuked or only narrated and set before us to judge, itself stands blameless and venerable.

What more useful and wholesome provision could be made for those who read or hear those sacred writings with godliness than that in them there should be set forth not only praiseworthy men for imitation and blameworthy men for avoidance, but also certain turnings aside and slips of the good into evil—whether they are later corrected and return to the way, or remain beyond recall—and again certain changes and advances of the bad into good—whether they will persevere or relapse again into their former state—so that neither the righteous may be lifted up into pride by security, nor the wicked hardened against the medicine by despair? And those deeds of men which pertain neither to imitation nor to avoidance, and yet are found in holy Scripture, either were put there for connection, as occasions by which necessary matters are reached, or by the very fact that they seem superfluous sufficiently warn us that the oracle of some mystical meaning must be sought in them. For we are not speaking of books in which nothing, or few things and not many, has been foretold by the prophetic spirit, most plainly and now also fulfilled in the events themselves, testifying to their divine authority by the most faithful and brilliant light of truth; so that whoever thinks they said anything superfluously or foolishly is utterly out of his mind, when he sees not only everything of men and their talents subject to them, but also reads that this was foretold by them and knows it has been accomplished.

If, then, someone reading the deed of David, of which he repented when the Lord rebuked and threatened him, takes from it fuel for himself to sin, is that Scripture to be blamed? Is he not rather to be condemned the more severely, the more he chose to misuse, for wounding or killing himself, a thing which was written for healing and freeing? For because men who have fallen into sin either neglect the medicine of repentance out of pride or perish utterly through despair of recovering health and gaining pardon, the example of so great a man was set forth, by which the sick may be healed, not by which those who are healthy may be wounded. For it is not the fault of medicine if madmen kill themselves, or malicious men kill others, with medical instruments.

But yet our fathers, the patriarchs and prophets, to whom so illustrious a testimony of holiness and godliness is borne by that Scripture which no one denies to have been divinely dispensed for the salvation of the human race unless he either does not know it or has lost all sense of rational consideration—even if they had been lustful and cruel, as the error, or rather the madness, of the Manichaeans accuses them, would they not even so be shown to be better, I will not say than their elect, but than their god himself? Is it not better for a man to wallow with a concubine, a man with a woman, than to be the purest light and to be defiled by mixing with darkness? See, a man, for greed and his belly, falsely called his wife his sister and sold her for others' intercourse: how much worse and more execrable is he who, by pretence adapting his own nature to the lust of those who desired it, gave it up to them for nothing to be polluted and corrupted! Even one who lay with his daughters knowingly, does he not commit less evil than one who mixes his own members with the lusts of all such and worse foulnesses? For what such thing is committed by the unclean and wicked in which your god, Manichaeans, is not polluted with all the foulnesses? Finally, if Jacob truly, as Faustus says, roamed among four wives with foul desire like a he-goat, taking no care for offspring but only for wanton pleasure, how much less wretched would he be than your god, who not only would suffer in him and in his four wives all that disgrace of luxury, compounded with all their bodies and movements, but in the very he-goat to which that filthy man compared him suffers all that generative movement and heat, and, everywhere mixed under a foul condition, is inflamed in the he-goat, sown in the she-goat, begotten in the kid! And so, even if Judah had been not only a fornicator but also a wicked and knowing violator of his daughter-in-law in incest, your god would have stuck, been defiled, and burned in the lust of that incest too. And David repented of his iniquity, that he loved another's wife and ordered her husband to be killed; but when will your god repent that, loved by the hellish race, male and female, of the princes of darkness, he yielded his members to their lust, and killed not a husband whose wife he had loved, but his own sons in the members of the demons, by which demons he himself had been loved? But even if David had not repented, and had not received the health of righteousness by such medicine, even so he would have been better than this god of the Manichaeans. For let us suppose him guilty of that one deed itself and of as many other such as one man could commit; but that god is convicted of being disgraced and polluted in all such deeds of all men by that mixing of his members. And the prophet Hosea is accused by Faustus: if he, captivated by foul desire, had loved and married a harlot—you certainly proclaim that the souls of both, the wanton lover and the obscene harlot, are parts and members and the nature of your god—that harlot, then (why should I go round in words and not speak plainly?), that harlot would be your god. For you cannot say that, keeping the nature of his holiness preserved and uncorrupted, he came into that harlot's body not bound but only present; rather you confess that these members of your god are most defiled and for that reason need great purification. That harlot, then, for whom you dare to accuse the man of God, would be your god, even if she had not been changed for the better by chaste marriage; or, if you will not have it so, you certainly do not deny that the soul of the harlot is a particle of your god, however small. In this, then, she is already better than your god, since she would be one harlot, while he, by the condition of that mixture of his, is prostituted to the whole race of darkness in all harlots; and in all males and females, finally, who commit fornication widely and variously and corrupt themselves, he is rolled about, loosed, and bound, to be rolled, loosed, and bound again in their offspring, until at last the most unclean part of your god is brought to the final globe like an inexpiable harlot. These evils, these foulnesses, these disgraces your god could not remove from his members, and, compelled by the necessity of a monstrous enemy, he came to them; for he could not kill the injurious and violent one while keeping his citizens or parts safe. How much better, then, is he who, having killed the Egyptian, defended his brother unharmed—whom Faustus accuses with wonderful vanity, while with more wonderful blindness he does not look at his own god! How much better that Moses should take vessels of gold and silver from the race of the Egyptians than that the race of darkness should plunder his god's members! And yet, though their god himself waged so wretched a war, his worshippers object to the servant of our God that he waged wars, in which he always triumphed with all his people as victor over the enemies, who could be led away as male or female captives by the people of Israel, while Moses waged war: which your god too would certainly have done if he could. This, then, is not to accuse the wicked but to envy the more fortunate. And what cruelty was there in Moses in taking vengeance with the sword on the people who had sinned gravely against God? For he begged pardon for that sin for them, offering himself even to divine punishment. Yet if he had done even this not mercifully but cruelly, even so he would have been better than your god. For he would in no way afterwards, if he had conquered, condemn any of his own who were innocent and obedient, if he had been sent to break through the enemy's ranks and been taken captive: which this god is going to do to that part of himself which he will fix in the globe, because it obeyed his command, because, its death set before it, it went forth into the enemy ranks for the safety of his kingdom. “But in this succession of ages,” he says, “now mixed with evils and compounded with them, it did not obey the precepts.” Let us ask why. If by its own will, the fault is real and the punishment just; but then, if the will is guilty, there is no contrary nature compelling to sin, and so the whole deceit of the Manichaeans is convicted and overthrown. But if it was overwhelmed by the enemy to whom it was sent, if overcome by another's evil which it could not resist, the punishment is unjust and the cruelty great. “But God's necessity,” it is said, “is brought forward to excuse it.” Let those worship such a god who do not wish to worship God. Indeed—as must be admitted—even his worshippers themselves, though by worshipping such a god they are most wicked, are yet better than he, because at least they exist; while he is nothing but a fiction of falsehood and a figment of vanity. But now let us look at the rest of Faustus's clever ravings.