sacrifices, and priests? But all these names are found also in the New Testament. " De- stroy," Christ says, ''this temple, and in three days I will raise it up;'^^ and again, " When thou offerest thy gift at the altar;" 3 and again, "Go, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thyself a sacrifice as Moses com- manded, for a testimony unto them." * Wliat these tilings prefigured the Lord Himself partly tells us, when He calls His own body the temple; and we learn also from the apostle, who says, "The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are;"^ and again, "I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God;"* and in similar passages. As the same apostle says, in words which cannot be too often quoted, these things were our examples, for they were not the work of devils, but of the one true God who made heaven and earth, and who, though not needing such things, yet, suiting His re- quirements to the time, made ancient observ- ances significant of future realities. Since you pretend to abhor Paganism, though it is only that you may lead astray by your decep- tion unlearned Christians or those not estab- lished in the faith, show us any authority in Christian books for your worship and service of the sun and moon. Your heresy is liker Paganism than the law of Moses is. For you do not worship Christ, but only something that you call Christ, a fiction of your own fancy; and the gods you serve are either the bodies visible in the heavens, or hosts of your own contrivance. If you do not build shrines for these worthless idols, the creatures of the imagination, you make your hearts their temple.
II. You ask me to show what Moses wrote of Christ. Many passages have already been pointed out. But who could point out al!? Besides, when any quotation is made, you are ready perversely to try to give the words another meaning; or if the evidence is too strong to be resisted, you will say that you take the passage as a sweet fish out of the salt water, and that you will not therefore consent to drink all the brine of the books of Moses. It will be enough, then, to take those passages in the Hebrew law which Faustus has chosen for criticism, and to show that, when rightly understood, they apply to Christ. For if the things which our adversary ridicules and con- demns are made to prove that he himself is condemned by Christian truth, it will be evident that either the mere quotation or the careful examination of the other passages will - John ii. ig. 5 I Cor. iii. i?
4 Matt. viii. 4.
i;ooK XVI.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH.4£AN.
1 be enough to show their agreement with Christian faith. Well, then, O thou full of all subtilty, when the Lord in the Gospel says, "If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me also, for he v/rote of me," ' there is no occasion for the great perplexity you pre- tend to be in, or for the alternative of either pronouncing this verse spurious or calling fesus a liar. The verse is as genuine as its words are true. I preferred, says Faustus, to I attribute falsehood to the writers, rather than to the Author of truth. What sort of faith can you have in Christ as the author of truth, \vhen your doctrine is that His flesh and His 'Icath, His wounds and their marks, were leigned? And where is your authority for saying that Christ is the author of truth, if \ ou dare to attribute falsehood to those who wrote of Him, whose testimony has come down to us with the confirmation of those I immediately succeeding them? You have iiot seen Christ, nor has He conversed with you as with the apostles, nor called you from iieaven as He did Saul. What knowledge or ■lief can we have of Christ, but on the au- inority of Scripture? Or if there is falsehood Ml the Gospel which has been widely published mong all nations, and has been held in such High sacredness in all churches since the name ^'f Christ was first preached, where shall we iind a trustworthy record of Christ? If the (iospel is called in question in spite of the -cneral consent regarding it, there can be no i'vriting which a man may not call spurious if I he does not wish to believe it.
12. You go on to quote Christ's words, that all who came before Him were thieves and robbers. How do you know that these 'vere Christ's words, but from the Gospel? 'ou profess faith in these words, as if you id heard them from the mouth of the Lord Himself. But if any one declares the verse ti) be spurious, and denies that Christ said this, you will have, in reply, to exert yourself in vindication of the authority of the Gospel. I'nhappy being! what you refuse to believe is written in the same place as that which you piote as spoken by the Lord Himself. We ■ilieve both, for we believe the sacred narra- tive in which both are contained. We believe ' oth that Moses wrote of Christ, and that all at came before Christ were thieves and rob- crs. By their coming He means their not ■ >tlng sent. Those who were sent, as Moses land the holy prophets, came not before Him, ;l>ut with Him. They did not proudly wish ito precede Him, but were the humble bearers pi the message which He uttered by them.
Juhn V. 46.
According to the meaning which you give to the Lord's words, it is plain that with you there can be no prophets. And so you have made a Christ for yourselves who should prophesy a Christ to come. If you have any prophets of your own, they will have, of course, no authority, as not being recognized by any others; but if there are any that you dare to quote as prophesying that Christ would come in an unreal body, and would suffer an unreal death, and would show to His doubting disciples unreal marks of wounds, not to speak of the abominable nature of such prophecies, and of the evident untruthfulness of those who commend falsehood in Christ, by your own interpretation those prophets must have been thieves and robbers, for they could not have spoken of Christ as coming in any man- ner unless they had come before Him. If by those who came before Christ we under- stand those who would not come with Him, — that is, with the Word of God, — but without being sent byGod brought their own falsehoods to men, you yourselves, although you are born in this world after the death and the resurrection of Christ, are thieves and rob- bers. For, without waiting for His illumina- tion that you might preach His truth, you have come before Him to preach up your own deceits.
13. In the passage where we read of the Jews saying to Christ, Thou bearest witness of thyself, thy witness is not true, you do not see that Christ replies by saying that Moses wrote of Him, simply because you have not got the eye of piety to see with. The answer of Christ is this: " It is written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true; I am. one who bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me." ^ What does this mean, if rightly understood, but that this number of witnesses required by the law was fixed upon and consecrated in the spirit of prophecy, that even thus might be prefigured the future revelation of the Father and Son, whose spirit is the Holy Spirit of the inseparable Trinity? So it is written: " In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." ^ As a matter of fact, one witness generally speaks the truth, while a number tell lies. And the world, in its conversion to Christianity, believed one apostle preaching the gospel rather than the mistaken multitude who persecuted him. There was a special reason for requiring this number of witnesses, and in His answer the Lord implied that Moses prophesied of Him. Do you carp at His saying your law instead ' John viii. 17, iS.
3 Dent. xix. 15.
224 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Cook XVI.
of the law of (iod? But, as everyone knows, this is tlie common expression in Scripture. Your law mems the law given to you. So the apostle speaks of his gospel, while at the same time he declares that he received it not from man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. You might as well say that Christ denies God to be His Father, when He uses the words your Father instead of our Father. Again, you should refuse to believe the voice which you allude to as having come from heaven, This is my beloved Son, believe Him, because you did not hear it. But if you believe this because you find it in the sacred Scriptures, you will also find there what you deny, that Moses wrote of Christ, besides many other things that you do not acknowledge as true. Do you not see that your own mischievous argument may be used to prove that this voice never came from heaven? To your own destruction, and to the detriment of the wel- fare of mankind, you try to weaken the author- ity of the gospel, by arguing that it cannot be true that Christ said that Moses wrote of Him; because if He had said this, the inge- nious hostility of the Jews would have led them at once to ask what He supposed Moses to have written of Him. In the same way, it might be impiously argued that if that voice had really come from heaven, all the Jews who heard it would have believed. Why are you so unreasonable as not to consider that, as it was possible for the Jews to remain hard- ened in unbelief after hearing the voice from heaven, so it was possible for them, when Christ said that Moses wrote of Him, to re- frain from asking what Moses wrote, because in their ingenious hostility they were afraid of being proved to be in the wrong?
14. Besides that this argument is an im- pious assault on the gospel, Faustus himself is aware of its feebleness, and therefore insists more on what he calls his chief difficulty, — that in all his search of the writings of Moses he has found no prophecies of Christ. The obvious '"eply is, that he does not understand. And if any one asks why he does not under- stand, the answer is that he reads with a hos- tile, unbelieving mind; he does not search in order to know, but thinks he knows when he is ignorant. This vainglorious presumption either blinds the eye of his understanding so as to prevent his seeing anything, or distorts his vision, so that his remarks of approval or disapproval are misdirected. I ask, he says, for instruction in whatever the writings of Moses contain about our God and Lord, which has escaped me in reading. I reply at once that it has all escaped him, for all is written of Christ. As we cannot go throuofh the wliole, I will, with the help of God, comply witu your request, to the extent I have already promised, by showing that the passages which you specially criticise refer to Christ. You tell me not to use the ignorant argument that Christ afifirms Moses to have written of Him. But if I use this argument, it is not because I am ignorant, but because I am a believer. I acknowledge that this argument will not con- vince a Gentile or a JejM,. But, in spite of all your evasions, you are obliged to confess that it tells against you, who boast of possess- ing a kind of Christianity. You say, Sup- pose you had not to deal with me, as in my case t'nere is an obligation to believe Him whom I profess to follow, but with a Jew or a Gentile. This is as much as to say that you, at any rate, with whom I have at present to do, are satisfied that Moses wrote of Christ; for you are not bold enough to discard alto- gether the well-grounded authority of the Gospel where Christ's own declaration is re- corded. Even when you attack this authority indirectly, you feel that you are attacking your own position. You are aware that if you refuse to believe the Gospel, which is so generally known and received, you must fail utterly in the attempt to substitute for it any trustworthy record of the sayings and doings of Christ. You are afraid that the loss of the Christian name might lead to the exposure of your absurdities to universal scorn and con- demnation. Accordingly you try to recover yourself, by saying that your profession of Christianity obliges you to believe these words of the Gospel. So you, at any rate, which is all that we need care for just now, are caught and slain in this death-blow to your errors. You are forced to confess that Moses wrote of Christ, because the Gospel, which your profession obliges you to believe, states that Christ said so. As regards a discussion with a Jew or a Gentile, I have already shown ns well as I could how I think it should be con- ducted.
15. I still hold that there is a reference to Christ in the passage which you select f(ir refutation. v;here God says to Moses, "I will raise up unto them from among their brethren a prophet like unto thee."' The string of showy antitheses with which you try to orna- ment your dull discourse does not at all affect my belief of this truth. You attempt to prove, by a comparison of Christ and Moses, that the}' are unlike, and that therefore the words, " I will raise *up a prophet like unto thee," cannot be understood of Christ. You specify a number of particulars in which you I Deut. xviii. 15.
Book XVI.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH^AN.
2^5 find a diversity: that the one is man, and the ither God; that one is a sinner, the other inless; that one is born of ordinary genera- tion, the other, as we hold, of a virgin, and, as you hold, not even of a virgin; the one incurs God's anger, and is put to death on a mountain, the other suffers voluntarily, hav- ing throughout the approval of His Father. r.iit surely things may be said to be like, al- tiiough they are not like in every respect. I'.esides the resemblance between things of the brtme nature, as between two men, or between parents and children, or between men in i^eneral, or any species of animals, or in trees, between one olive and another, or one laurel r lid another, there is often a resemblance in lings of a different nature, as between a wild and a tame olive, or between wheat and bar- Icy. These things are to some extent allied. Hut there is the greatest possible distance be- tween the Son of God, by whom all things were made, and a beast or a stone. And yet '1 the Gospel we read, " Behold the Lamb of od," ' and in the apostle, "That rock was t hrist." "" This could not be said except on •Jie supposition of some resemblance. What wonder, then, if Christ condescended to beime like Moses, when He was made like • le lamb which God by Moses commanded liis people to eat as a type of Christ, enjoin- ing that its blood should be used as a means nf protection, and that it should be called the "assover, which every one must admit to be ilfilled in Christ? The Scripture, I acknowl- ledge, shows points of difference; and the •■ ripture also, as I call on you to acknowledge, ows points of resemblance. There are lints of both kinds, and one can be proved as well as the other. Christ is unlike man, tor He is God; and it is written of Him that He is "over all, God blessed for ever."^ < hrist is also like man, for He is man; and " is likewise written of Him, that He is the " Mediator between God and man, the man iirist Jesus. "^ Christ is unlike a sinner, for lie IS ever holy; and He is like a sinner, for ■■'God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful ^csh, that by sin He might condemn sin in e flesh. "5 Christ is unlike a man born in dinary generation, for He was born of a rgin; and yet He is like, for He too was born f a woman, to whom it was said, " That holy ing which shall be born of thee shall be lied the Son of God.""^ Christ is unlike a an, who dies on account of his own sin, for He died without sin, and of His own free- 1 iVill; and again. He is like, for He too died 1 real death of the body.
i6. You ought not to say, in disparagement of Moses, that he was a sinner, and that he was put to death on a mountain because his God was angry with him. For Moses could glory in the Lord as his Saviour, wlio is also the Saviour of him who says, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. ''7 Moses, indeed, is accused by the voice of God, because his faith showed signs of weakness when he was commanded to draw water out of the rock.^ In this he may have sinned as Peter did, when from the weakness of his faith he became afraid in the midst of the waves. » But we cannot think from this, that he who, as the Gospel tells us, was counted worthy to be present with the Lord along with holy Elias on the mount of transfiguration, was separated from the eter- nal fello\vship of the saints. The sacred his- tory shows in what favor he was with Gotl even after his sin. But since you may ask why God speaks of this sin as deserving the punishment of death, and as I have promised to point out prophecies of Christ in those passages which you select for criticism, I will try, with the Lord's help, to show that what you object to in the death of Moses is, when rightly understood, prophetical of Christ.
17. We often find in the symbolical pas- sages of Scripture, that the same person aj')- pears in different characters on different occa- sions. So, on this occasion, Moses represents' and prefigures the Jewish people as placed under the law. As, then, Moses, when he struck the rock with his rod, doubted the power of God, so the people who were under the law given by Moses, when they nailed Christ to the cross, did not believe Him to be the power of God. And as water flowed from the smitten rock for those that were athirst, so life'comes to believers from the stroke of the Lord's passion. The testimony of the apostle is clear and decisive on this point, when he says, " This rock was Christ." '" In the command of God, that the death of t'le flesh of Moses should take place on the moun- tain, we see the divine appointment that the carnal doubt of the divinity of Christ should die on Christ's exaltation. As the rock is Christ, so is the mountain. The rock is the fortitude of His humiliation; the mountain the height of His exaltation. For as the apostle says. "This rock was Christ," so Christ Himself says, ".\ city set upon an hill cannot be hid," " showing that He is the hill, and believers the city built upon the glory of His name. The carnal mind lives when, like the smitten rock, the humiliation of Christ on 15 9 Matt. xiv. 30.
226 Till-: WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Book XVI.
the cross is despised. For Christ crucified is to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness. And the carnal mind dies when, like the mountain-top, Christ is seen in His exaltation. " For to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God/' ' Moses therefore ascended the mount, that in the death of the flesh he might be received by the living spirit. If Faustus had ascended, he would not have uttered carnal objections from a dead mind. It was the carnal mind that made Peter dread the smiting of the rock, when, on the occasion of the Lord's foretell- ing His passion, he said, " Be it far from Thee, Lord; spare Thyself." And this sin too was severely rebuked, when the Lord re- plied, "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me: for thou savorest not the things which be of God, but those which be of men."- And where did this carnal distrust die but in the glorification of Christ, as on a mountain height? If it was alive when Peter timidly denied Christ, it was dead when he fearlessly preached Him. It wa*s alive in Saul, when, in his aversion to the offense of the cross, he made havoc of the Christian faith, and where but on this mountain had it died, when Paul was able to say, " I live no longer, but Christ liveth in me?"^ 1 8. What other reason has your heretical folly to give for thinking that there is no prophecy of Christ in the words, " I will raise up unto them a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee? " Your showing Christ to be unlike Moses is no reason; for we can show that in other respects He is I'ke. How can you object to Christ's being called a prophet, since He condescended to be a man, and actually foretold many future events? What is a prophet, but one who predict*events beyond human foresight? So Christ says of Himself: " A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. '^ "* But, turning from you, since you have already acknowledged that your profession of Christianity obliges you to believe the Gospel, I address myself to the Jew, who enjoys the poor privilege of liberty from the yoke of Christ, and who there- fore thinks it allowable to say: Your Christ spoke falsely; Moses wrote nothing of him.
19. Let the Jews say what prophet is meant in this promise of God to Moses: " I will raise up unto them a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee." Many prophets appeared after Moses; but one in particular is here pointed out. The Jews will perhaps naturally think of the successor of Moses, who led into the promised land the people that Moses had brought out of Egypt. Hav- ing this successor of Moses in his mind, he may perhaps laugh at me for asking to what prophet the words of the promise refer, since it is recorded who followed Moses in ruling and leading the people. When he has laughed at my ignorance, as Faustus supposes him to do, I will still continue my inquiries, and will desire my laughing opponent to give me a serious answer to the question why Moses changed the name of this successor, who was preferred to himself as the leader of the people into the promised land, to show that the law given by Moses not to save, but to convince the sinner, cannot lead us into heaven, but only the grace and truth which are by Jesus Christ. This successor was called Osea, and Moses gave him the name of Jesus. Why then did he give him this name when he sent him from the valley of Pharan into the land into which he was to lead the people?= The true Jesus says, " If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself."* I will ask the Jew if the prophet does not show the prophetical mean- ing of these things when he says, " God shall come from Africa, and the Holy One from Pharan.'' Does this not mean that the holy God would come with the name of him who came from Africa by Pharan, that is, with the name of Jesus? Then, again, it is the Word of God Himself who speaks when He prom- ises to provide this successor to Moses, speak- ing of him as an angel, — a name commonly given in Scripture to those carrying any mes- sage. The words are: "Behold I send my angel before thy face, to preserve thee in the way, and to bring thee into the land which I have sworn to give thee. Take heed unto him, and obey, and beware of unbelief in him; for he will not take anything from thee wrong- fully, for my name is in him."'' Consider these words. Let the Jew, not to speak of the Manich?ean, say what other angel he can find in Scripture to whom these words appl}', but this leader who was to bring the people into the land of promise. Then let him inquire who it was that succeeded Moses, and brought in the people. He will find that it was Jesus, and that this was not his name at first, buti after his name was changed. It follows that" He who said, " ]\Iy name is in him," is the true Jesus, the leader who brings His people into the inheritance of eternal life, according to the New Testament, of which the Old was a figure. No event or action could have a more distinctly prophetical character than this, where the very name is a prediction.