On the Catholic Way of Life and On the Manichaean Way of Life 1.31–2.3

What is it, I ask, that those see who cannot help loving a human being and yet can do without seeing a human being? Surely that, whatever it is, is more excellent than human things, by the contemplation of which a human being can live without human beings. Now hear, Manichaeans, the morals and singular self-control of perfect Christians, to whom the highest chastity has seemed not only praiseworthy but something to be taken up; so that, if you have any shame, you may not dare to boast shamelessly before the minds of the ignorant, as if of a most difficult abstinence. And I will not speak of things you do not know, but of things you hide from us. For who does not know that a multitude of Christians of the highest self-control is spreading more and more every day through the whole world, and most of all in the East and in Egypt, which cannot be hidden from you at all?

I will say nothing of those I mentioned a little before, who, withdrawn utterly from all human sight, live in the most deserted lands, content with bread alone, brought to them at fixed intervals, and water; enjoying converse with God, to whom they have cleaved with pure minds, and most happy in the contemplation of his beauty, which cannot be perceived except by the understanding of the saints. I will say nothing of these, I repeat: for they seem to some to have abandoned human affairs more than they should, since these do not understand how much their minds help us in their prayers, and their lives as an example, though we are not allowed to see their bodies. But to argue this would be long and superfluous, I think: for how can our speech make anyone see this so lofty summit of holiness who does not by himself think it worthy of wonder and honor? These boasters need only be reminded that the temperance and self-control of the holiest Christians of the catholic faith has advanced so far that to some it seems as if it should be restrained and called back, as it were, within human limits; so far, even those who dislike it judge, have their minds risen above human beings.

But if this goes beyond what we can bear, who would not admire and proclaim those who, having despised and abandoned the allurements of this world, are gathered into a common life most chaste and most holy, and spend their lives together, living in prayers, in readings, in discussions; puffed up by no pride, disturbed by no obstinacy, livid with no envy; but modest, reverent, peaceful, offering to him from whom they have deserved the power to do these things a most harmonious life, wholly intent on God, as a most pleasing gift? No one possesses anything of his own, no one is a burden to anyone. They work with their hands at things by which the body can be fed and the mind not hindered from God. They hand over their work to those they call deans, because they are set over ten, so that no care for his body touches any of them, neither in food, nor in clothing, nor in anything else needed for daily necessity or for illness, which often comes. Those deans, arranging everything with great care, and providing at once whatever that life requires because of the weakness of the body, themselves also give account to one, whom they call father. These fathers, not only most holy in conduct but also most excellent in divine teaching, lofty in every way, take counsel without any pride for those they call sons, with great authority on their part in commanding and great willingness on the others' part in obeying. At the end of the day they gather, each from his own dwelling, while still fasting, to hear that father; and at least three thousand men gather to each father, for even many more live under one. They listen with incredible eagerness, in deepest silence, showing the feelings of their minds, as the speaker's words have moved them, by groans, or tears, or a modest joy free of all clamor. Then the body is refreshed, as much as suffices for health and soundness, each one restraining desire, lest it pour itself out even on the scanty and very cheap things provided. So they abstain not only from meat and wine, as far as suffices to tame the passions, but also from those things which provoke the appetite of belly and throat the more as they seem to some to be cleaner, as it were; under which name a shameful desire for exquisite foods, foreign to meat, is usually defended ridiculously and shamefully. Whatever is left over beyond necessary food (and much is left over from the work of their hands and the restraint of their meals) is distributed to the needy with greater care than it was acquired by those who distribute it. For they take no trouble at all to have abundance for themselves, but do everything so that what is left over does not stay with them, so much so that they even send ships loaded with it to places inhabited by the poor. There is no need to say more about a thing so well known.

This is also the life of women who serve God anxiously and chastely, who, separated and removed in their dwellings as far as is fitting from the men, are joined to them only by devout love and imitation of virtue. No young men have access to them, nor even the oldest men, however grave and well proved, except as far as the entrance, to supply the things they need. For they exercise and support the body by working wool, and hand over the clothes themselves to the brothers, receiving from them in return what they need for food. If I wished to praise these morals, this life, this order, this way of living, I could not do it worthily, and I fear I might seem to judge that, set out simply by itself, it could not please, if I thought the tragic buskin of the eulogist should be added to the plainness of the narrator. Find fault with these things, Manichaeans, if you can. Do not parade our tares before blind people who cannot discern.

Yet the excellent morals of the catholic Church are not so narrowly confined that I think the life of those alone whom I have mentioned is to be praised. For how many bishops have I known, most excellent and most holy men, how many presbyters, how many deacons, and ministers of the divine sacraments of every kind, whose virtue seems to me the more wonderful and the more worthy of praise, the harder it is to preserve it amid the manifold kinds of people and in this more turbulent life! For they preside over people not so much healed as needing healing. The vices of the multitude must be endured in order to be cured, and the plague must be borne before it can be stilled. It is very hard here to keep the best manner of life and a peaceful and tranquil mind. For, to explain briefly, the monks live where one learns to live, the clergy where one lives.

Nor would I on that account despise a praiseworthy kind of Christians, namely those who live in cities, far removed from ordinary life. I myself saw at Milan a lodging of holy men, not a few, over whom one presbyter presided, an excellent and most learned man. At Rome too I knew of several, in each of which one man, outstanding in gravity, prudence, and divine knowledge, presides over the others living with him, who live in Christian love, holiness, and freedom: they too are a burden to no one, but, after the custom of the East and on the authority of the apostle Paul, support themselves with their own hands. I learned that many practice fasts that are quite incredible, not refreshing the body once a day toward night, which is everywhere most common, but very often going three days in a row or more without food and drink. And this not only among men but also among women; many widows and virgins also live together and seek their living by wool and weaving, and over each house presides one woman, most grave and well proved, skilled and ready not only in forming and ordering morals but also in instructing minds.

And amid all this no one is pressed into hardships he cannot bear, nothing is imposed on anyone that he refuses, nor is he condemned by the rest because he confesses himself too weak to imitate them: for they remember how much love is commended in all the Scriptures; they remember, “To the pure all things are pure,” and, “Not what goes into your mouth defiles you, but what comes out.” So all their effort is spent, not on rejecting kinds of food as polluted, but on subduing desire and keeping love among the brothers. They remember: “Food is for the belly and the belly for food; but God will destroy both the one and the other”; and elsewhere, “Neither if we eat shall we have more, nor if we do not eat shall we have less”; and above all that saying, “It is good, brothers, not to eat meat nor to drink wine, nor anything by which your brother is offended.” For here he shows how all these things must be directed to the end of love. “For one believes he may eat all things; but let him who is weak,” he says, “eat vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat; and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own Lord he stands or falls; and he will stand, for God is able to make him stand.” And a little later: “He who eats, eats to the Lord, and gives thanks to God; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.” And again in what follows: “So each of us will give account for himself. Let us therefore no longer judge one another; but judge this rather, not to put a stumbling block or occasion of offense before a brother. I know and am confident in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean through him; but to him who thinks anything unclean, to him it is unclean.” Could he have shown more plainly that it is not in the things we eat but in the mind that there is a power able to defile it; and that therefore even those who are fit to despise these things, and know for certain that they are not polluted if they take any food with loftiness of mind and without shameful desire, must still look to love? See what follows: “For if your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking according to love.” Read the rest, for it is long to insert it all; and you will find the precept that those who can despise these things, that is, the stronger and more secure, must nevertheless abstain, lest those be offended who because of their weakness still need such abstinence.

These things the people I was speaking of know and hold: for they are Christians, not heretics; they understand the Scriptures according to the apostolic teaching, not according to the proud and invented name of an apostle. No one despises him who does not eat, no one judges him who eats; he who is weak eats vegetables. Yet many who are strong do the same for the sake of the weak; for many the reason for doing so is not this, but that they like to live on cheaper food and to lead a very tranquil life with the least costly support for the body. “For all things are lawful for me,” he says, “but I will not be brought under the power of anything.” So many do not eat meat, yet do not superstitiously think it unclean. Accordingly, the very same people who abstain when healthy take it without any fear when sick, if their health requires. Many do not drink wine, yet do not think they are defiled by it: for they have it given most kindly and modestly to some who are weaker, and to all who cannot keep their bodily health without it. And they admonish as brothers some who foolishly refuse it, lest by vain superstition they become weaker sooner than holier. They read to them the Apostle commanding his disciple to take a little wine for his frequent ailments. So they practice godliness diligently; but bodily exercise, as the same Apostle says, they know is of little value. Those who can, then, and they are countless, abstain from meat and wine for two reasons: either for the weakness of the brothers or for their own freedom. Love above all is kept; to love their food, to love their speech, to love their dress, to love their looks are fitted; they come together and conspire into one love; to violate it is held as wicked as to violate God; whatever resists it is fought down and cast out; whatever offends it is not allowed to last a single day. They know that it has been so commended by Christ and the apostles that, if it alone is lacking, all things are empty; if it is present, all things are full.

Resist these, Manichaeans, if you can; look at these, name these, if you dare, without lying, and with insult if you like: compare your fasts with their fasts, your chastity with their chastity, your dress with their dress, your meals with their meals, your modesty with their modesty, your love with their love, and, what the matter chiefly demands, your precepts with their precepts. Then you will see the difference between show and sincerity, between the right way and error, between faith and deceit, between strength and swelling, between happiness and misery, between unity and division, and finally between the sirens of superstition and the harbor of religion. Do not gather for me those who profess the Christian name but neither know nor show the force of their profession. Do not hunt out the crowds of the ignorant, who either are superstitious even in the true religion itself, or are so given to their lusts that they have forgotten what they promised God. I know there are many worshipers of tombs and pictures; I know there are many who drink most luxuriously over the dead, and, offering feasts to corpses, bury themselves over the buried and count their gluttony and drunkenness as religion. I know there are many who have renounced this world in words, yet wish to be weighed down by all the burdens of this world and rejoice to be so weighed down. Nor is it surprising that in so great a multitude of peoples you do not lack people whose blameworthy lives you can use to deceive the unwary and turn them away from catholic salvation; while in your own small numbers you are in great straits when you are asked for even one of those you call the Elect who keeps those very precepts you defend with irrational superstition. But how vain those precepts are, how harmful, how sacrilegious, and how they are not observed by a great part of you, indeed by almost all of you, I have undertaken to show in another volume.

Now I admonish you to cease at last to slander the catholic Church by finding fault with the morals of people whom she herself condemns, and whom she daily strives to correct as bad children. Whoever of them are corrected by good will and the help of God recover by repentance what they had lost by sinning. But those who by bad will persist in their former vices, or even add worse ones to the earlier, are indeed allowed to be in the Lord's field and to grow with the good seed; but the time will come when the tares will be separated. Or if, because of the very name of Christian, they are to be thought of as chaff rather than thorns, there will also come one who will clean the threshing floor, separate the chaff from the wheat, and give to each part what is due according to its merit with the highest fairness.

Meanwhile, why do you rage, why are you blinded by partisanship? Why do you entangle yourselves in the long defense of so great an error? Look for the crops in the field, the wheat on the threshing floor: they will appear easily and offer themselves to those who seek them. Why fix your eyes so much on the refuse? Why frighten ignorant people away from the richness of a fertile garden by the roughness of the hedges? There is a sure entrance, though known to fewer, by which one can go in, which you either do not believe exists or do not want to find. There are in the catholic Church countless believers who do not use this world; there are those who use it as though not using it, as the Apostle says; and this was proved in those times when Christians were forced to worship idols. For how many wealthy people then, how many country householders, how many merchants, how many soldiers, how many leading men of their cities, how many senators even, of both sexes, leaving all these vain and temporal things, which they used indeed but by which they were not held back, underwent death for the saving faith and religion, and showed unbelievers that they possessed all those things rather than being possessed by them!

Why do you slander us by saying that believers already renewed by baptism ought not to beget children, or possess fields and houses or any money? Paul allowed it. For, as cannot be denied, he wrote to believers, after listing many vicious people who will not possess the kingdom of God: “And such you were,” he says, “but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” No one will dare to understand “washed” and “sanctified” as anyone but believers and those who have renounced this world. But since he has shown to whom he wrote, let us see whether he permits these things to them. For it goes on: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of anything. Food is for the belly and the belly for food; but God will destroy both the one and the other. The body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord, and will raise us also by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Far from it. Do you not know that he who cleaves to a prostitute becomes one body? For the two, he says, shall be in one flesh. But he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Do you not know that your members are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a great price: glorify and carry God in your body.” “Now concerning the things you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman; but because of incontinence let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to the wife what is due, and likewise the wife to the husband. The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; and likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife. Do not defraud one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. But I say this by way of concession, not of command. For I would that all men were as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way and another in that.”

Does the Apostle seem to you to have shown the strong what is highest and to have permitted the weaker what is next to it? For he shows that not touching a woman is highest when he says, “I would that all men were as I myself am.” Next to this highest is conjugal chastity, so that a person may not be laid waste by sexual immorality. Did he say on that account that these were not yet believers, because they live with their spouses? Indeed, by this chastity of marriage he said that both the spouses themselves are sanctified by one another, if one of them is an unbeliever, and the offspring born of them: “For the unbelieving husband,” he says, “is sanctified in the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through the believing husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.” Why do you obstinately clamor against so great a truth? Why do you try to cloud the light of the Scriptures with empty shadows? Do not say any longer that catechumens may live with their wives but believers may not, that catechumens may have money but believers may not. For there are many who use as though not using. And in that most holy washing the renewal of the new man is begun, so that by progress it may be perfected, in some more quickly, in others more slowly; yet many advance into the new life, if one looks into it not with hostility but with care. For, as the Apostle says, “though our outer man is wasting away, yet the inner is being renewed day by day.” The Apostle says that the inner man is renewed day by day so that it may be perfected; and you want it to begin from perfection. Would that you wanted it! But you seek rather not how to raise up the weak but how to deceive the unwary. For you ought not to say this so boldly, not even if it were established that you are perfect in those trifling commands of yours. But since your own conscience knows that those whom you bring into your sect will, once they begin to be more closely joined with you, find many things in you which no one suspected while you were accusing others, what great shamelessness is it to demand perfection of weaker catholics, so as to turn the ignorant away from them, and not to show it in any way among yourselves to those you have turned away? But so as not to seem to pour out anything rashly against you now, let this be the limit of this volume, so that we may at last come to set out the precepts of your life and your memorable morals.

No one, I think, doubts that when we inquire about good and evil, this kind of question belongs to moral teaching, with which we are concerned in this discourse. So I could wish that people brought to the investigation of these things a gaze of mind so clear that they could see that highest good, than which nothing is better or higher, to which the rational soul, pure and perfect, is subjected. For once this was understood and perfected, they would see at the same time that it is what is most rightly said to exist supremely and primarily. For that is most of all to be said to exist which is always the same, which is in every way like itself, which can in no part be corrupted or changed, which is not subject to time, which cannot be otherwise now than it was before. For that is what is said to exist most truly. Beneath this word lies the meaning of a nature that abides in itself and remains unchangeably. This we can call nothing else but God; and if you rightly look for what is contrary to him, there is nothing at all. For being has no contrary except not being. So there is no nature contrary to God. But since we bring to the contemplation of these things a gaze of mind wounded and dulled by trifling opinions and by perversity of will, let us try, as far as we can, to reach some kind of knowledge of so great a matter step by step and carefully, not as those who see, but as those who grope usually search.

Often, indeed almost always, Manichaeans, you ask those whom you are trying to persuade of your heresy where evil comes from. Suppose I am now meeting you for the first time. Let me obtain something from you, if you please: that you too lay aside for a little the opinion by which you think you know these things, and try a matter so great with me as if you were beginners. You ask me where evil comes from; I in turn ask you what evil is. Whose inquiry is the more just? Theirs who ask where a thing comes from while they do not know what it is, or his who thinks one must first ask what it is, so that the origin of an unknown thing, which is most absurd, may not be sought? [You answer that evil is what is against nature.] You speak most truly. For who is so blind in mind as not to see that what is evil for each kind is what is against its nature? But once this is established, your heresy is overturned: for no nature is evil, if what is against nature is evil. But you assert that a certain nature and substance is evil. Add to this that whatever is against nature certainly opposes nature and strives to destroy it. It tends, then, to make what is cease to be. For nature itself is nothing other than that which is understood to be something in its own kind. So just as we now, by a new word derived from “to be,” call it essence, which we often also call substance, so the ancients, who did not have these words, said nature instead of essence and substance. This very thing, then, is evil, if you will attend without obstinacy: to fall away from essence and to tend toward not being.

Therefore, when it is said in the catholic Church that God is the author of all natures and substances, it is understood at the same time, by those who can understand it, that God is not the author of evil. For how can he who is the cause of all things that are, that they may be, be in turn the cause that they may not be, that is, that they fall away from essence and tend toward not being? And this, the truest reason proclaims, is evil in general. But that race of evil of yours, which you want to be the highest evil, how will it be against nature, that is, against substance, when you say it is a nature and substance? For if it acts against itself, it takes away its own being; and if it accomplishes that, then at last it will reach the highest evil. But it will not accomplish it, because you want it not only to be but to be everlasting. What is declared to be a substance, then, cannot be the highest evil.

But what am I to do? I know there are many among you who cannot understand these things at all. I know again that there are some who, though with good talent they see these things somehow, yet with bad will, by which they will lose even their talent, act obstinately and look rather for what to say against them that may easily persuade the slow and weak, than agree that they are true. Yet I shall not regret having written, either because one of you may at last consider these things with a fair judgment and abandon your error, or because men of talent who are subject to God and still untouched by your party may read them and not be deceived by your discourses.

Let us examine these things, then, more carefully and, as far as possible, more plainly. I ask you again: what is evil? If you say, “That which harms,” you will not be lying here either. But, I beg you, pay attention; I beg you, be watchful; I beg you, lay aside partisanship, and seek the truth for the sake not of winning but of finding. For whatever harms deprives the thing it harms of some good: for if it takes away no good, it does no harm at all. What, I beseech you, is clearer than this? What plainer? What so open to anyone of moderate understanding, provided he is not obstinate? Once this is laid down, it is already seen, I think, what follows. In that race which you suppose to be the highest evil, nothing can be harmed, since there is nothing good there. And if there are two natures, as you affirm, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, then since you confess that the kingdom of light is God, to whom you grant a kind of simple nature, so that in it nothing is inferior to anything else, you must confess, though it tells strongly against you, you must nevertheless confess, that this nature, which you not only do not deny to be the highest good but strenuously try to persuade people that it is, is unchangeable, impenetrable, incorruptible, and inviolable; otherwise it will not be the highest good, for that is what nothing is better than; and such a nature can in no way be harmed. But if to harm is to deprive of good, as I have shown, the kingdom of darkness cannot be harmed, because there is nothing good there; the kingdom of light cannot be harmed, because it is inviolable: whom, then, will what you call evil harm?