should not be worshipped; and we recom- mend the worship of the invisible Creator of all these things, in whom alone man can find the happiness which all allow that he desires. To those, again, who worship what is invisible and immaterial, but still is created, as the soul or mind of man, we say that happiness is not to be found in the creature even under this form, and that we must worship the true God, who is not only invisible, but unchange- able; for He alone is to be worshipped, in the enjoyment of whom the worshipper finds happiness, and without whom the soul must be wretched, whatever else it possesses. You, on the other hand, who worship things which have no existence at all except in your ficti- tious legends, would be nearer true piety and religion if you were Pagans, or if you were worshippers of what has an existence, though not a proper object of worship. In fact, you do not properly worship the sun, though he carries your prayers with him in his course round the heavens.
6. Your statements about the sun himself are so false and absurd, that if he were to re- pay you for the injury done to him, he would scorch you to death. First of all, you call the sun a ship, so that you are not only ' I Cor. X. 20.
astray worlds off, as the saying is, but adrift. Next, while every one sees that the sun is round, which is the form corresponding from its perfection to his position among the heavenly bodies, you maintain that he is tri- angular, that is, that his light shines on the earth through a triangular window in heaven. Hence it is that you bend and bow your heads to the sun, while you worship not this visible sun, but some imaginary ship which you sup- pose to be shining through a triangular open- ing. Assuredly this ship would never have been heard of, if the words required for the composition of heretical fictions had to be paid for, like the wood required for the beams of a ship. All this is comparatively harmless, however ridiculous or pitiable. Very differ- ent is your wicked fancy about youths of both sexes proceeding from this ship, whose beauty excites eager desire in the princes and prin- cesses of darkness; and so the members of your god are released from this humiliating'! confinement in the members of the race of darkness, by means of sinful passion and sen- sual appetite. And to these filthy rags of 1 yours you would unite the mystery of the Trinity; for you say that the Father dwells in a secret light, the power of the Son in the sun, and His wisdom in the moon, and the Holy Spirit in the air.
7. As for this threefold or rather fourfold fiction, what shall I say of the secret light of the Father, but that you can think of no light except what you have seen? From your knowledge of visible light, with which beasts and insects as well as men are familiar, you form some vague idea in your mind, and call it the light in which God the Father dwells with His subjects. How can you distinguish between the light by which we see, and that by which we understand, when, according to your ideas, to understand truth is nothing else than to form the conception of material forms, either finite or in some cases infinite; and you actually believe in these wild fancies? It is manifest that the act of my mind in thinking of your region of light which has no existence, is entirely different from my con- ception of Alexandria, which exists, though I have not seen it. And, again, the act of forming a conception of Alexandria, which I have never seen, is very different from think- ing of Carthage, which I know. But this dif- ference is insignificant as compared with that between my thinking of material things which I know from seeing them, and my understand- ing justice, chastity, faith, truth, love, good- ness, and things of this nature. Can you describe this intellectual light, which gives us a clear perception of the distinction between Book XX.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH.^AN.
255 itself and other things, as well as of the dis- tinction between those things themselves? And yet even this is not the sense in which it can be said that God is light, for this light is created, whereas God is tiie Creator; the light is made, and He is the JNIaker; the light is changeable. For the intellect changes from dislike to desire, from ignorance to knowl- edge, from forgetfulness to recollection; whereas God remains the same in will, in truth, and in eternity. From God we derive the beginning of existence, the principle of knowledge, the law of affection. From God all animals, rational and irrational, derive the nature of their life, the capacity of sensation, the faculty of emotion. From God all bodies deriv^e their subsistence in extension, their beauty in number, and their order in weight. This light is one divine being, in an insepa- rable triune existence; and yet, without sup- posing the assumption of any bodily form, vou assign to separate places parts of the im- material, spiritual, and unchangeable sub- stance. And instead of three places for the Trinity, you have four: one, the light inac- cessible, which you know nothing about, for the Father; two, the sun and moon, for the vSon; and again one, the circle of the atmosphere, for the Holy Spirit. Of the inaccessi- ble light of the Father I shall say nothing fur- ther at present, for orthodox believers do not separate the Son and the Spirit from the Father in relation to this light.
8. It is difficult to understand how you have been taken with the absurd idea of placing the power of the Son in the sun, and His wis- dom in the moon. For, as the Son remains inseparably in the Father, His wisdom and power cannot be separated from one another, so that one should be in the sun and the other in the moon. Only material things can be thus assigned to separate places. If you only understood this, it would have prevented you from taking the productions of a diseased fancy as the material for so many fictions. But there is inconsistency and improbabil- ity as well as falsehood in your ideas. For, according to you, the seat of wisdom is infe- rior in brightness to the seat of power. Now energy and productiveness are the qualities of power, whereas light teaches and mani- fests; so that if the sun had the greater heat, and the moon the greater light, these absur- I dities might appear to have some likelihood ' to men of carnal minds, who know nothing except through material conceptions. From the connection between great heat and motion, I they might identify power with heat; while I light from its brightness, and as making things discernible,they might represent wisdom. But what folly as well as profanity, in placing power in the sun, which excels so much in light, and wisdom in th.e moon, which is so inferior in brightness! And while you sepa- rate Christ from Himself, you do not distin- guish between Christ and the Holy Spirit; whereas Christ is one, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, and the Spirit is a dis- tinct person. But according to you, the air, which you make the seat of the Spirit, fills and pervades the universe. So the sun and moon in their course are always united to the air. But the moon approaches the sun at one time, and recedes from it at another. So that, if we may believe you, or rather, if we may allow ourselves to be imposed on by you, wis- dom recedes from power by half the circum- ference of a circle, and again approaches it by the other half. And when wisdom is full, it is at a distance from power. For when the moon is full, the distance between the two bodies is so great, that the moon rises in the east while the sun is setting in the west. But as the loss of power produces weakness, the fuller the moon is, the weaker must wisdom be. If, as is certainly true, the wisdom of God is unchangeable in power, and the power of God unchangeable in wisdom, how can you separate them so as to assign them to differ- ent places? And how can the place be differ- ent when the substance is the same? Is this not the infatuation of subjection to material fancies; showing such a want of power and wis- dom that your wisdom is as weak as your power is foolish? This execrable absurdity would divide Christ between the sun and the moon, — His power in one, and His wisdom in the other; so that He would be incomplete in both, lack- ing wisdom in the sun, and power in the moon, while in both He supplies youths, male and female, to excite the affection of the princes and princesses of darkness. Such are the tenets which you learn and profess. Such is the faith which directs your conduct. And can you wonder that you are regarded with abhorrence?
9. But besides your errors regarding these conspicuous and familiar luminaries, which you worship not for what they are, but for what your wild fancy makes them to be, your other absurdities are still worse than this. Your illustrious World-bearer, and Atlas who helps to hold him up, are unreal beings. Like innumerable other creatures of your fancy, they have no existence, and yet you worship them. For this reason we say that you are worse than Pagans, while you resemble them in worshipping many gods. You are worse, because, while they worship things which ex- ist though they are not gods, you worship 256 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Book XX.
things which are neither gods nor anything else, for they have no existence. The Pa- gans, too, have fables, but they know them to be fables; and either look upon them as amusing poetical fancies, or try to explain them as representing the nature of things, or the life of man. Thus they say that Vulcan is lame, because flame in common fire has an irregular motion: that Fortune is blind, be- cause of the uncertainty of what are called fortuitous occurrences: that there are three Fates, with distaff, and spindle, and fingers spinning wool into thread, because there are three times, — the past, already spun and wound on the spindle; the present, which is passing through the fingers of the spinner; and the future, still in wool bound to the dis- taff, and soon to pass through the fingers to the spindle, that is, through the present into the future: and that Venus is the wife of Vul- can, because pleasure has a natural connec- tion with heat; and that she is the mistr&ss of Mars, because pleasure is not properly the companion of warriors: and that Cupid is a boy with wings and a bow, from the wounds inflicted by thoughtless, inconstant passion in the hearts of unhappy beings: and so with many other fables. The great absurdity is in their continuing to worship these beings, after giving such explanations; for the wor- ship without the explanations, though crim- inal, would be a less heinous crime. The very explanations prove that they do not worship that God, the enjoyment of whom can alone give happiness, but things which He has created. And even in the creature they worship not only the virtues, as in Minerva, who sprang from the head of Jupiter, and who represents prudence, — a qbality of reason which, according to Plato, has its seat in the head, — but their vices, too, as in Cupid. Thus one of their dramatic poets says, " Sin- ful passion, in favor of vice, made Love a god."^ Even bodily evils had temples in Rome, as in the case of pallor and fever. Not to dwell on the sin of the worshippers of these idols, who are in a way affected by the bodily forms, so that they pay homage to them as deities, when they see them set up in some lofty place, and treated with great honor and reverence, there is greater sin in the very explanations which are intended as apologies for these dumb, and deaf, and blind, and lifeless objects. Still, though, as I have said, these things are nothing in the way of salvation or of usefulness, both they and the things they are said to represent are real ex- istences. But your First Man, warring with the five elements; and your Mighty Spirit, who constructs the world from the captive bodies of the race of darkness, or rather from the members of your god in subjection and bondage; and your World-holder, who has in his hand the remains of these members, and who bewails the capture and bondage and pollution of the rest; and your giant Atlas, who keeps up Uie AVorld-holder on his shoul- ders, lest he should from weariness throw away his burden, and so prevent the comple- tion of the final imitation of the mass of dark- ness, which is to be the last scene in your, drama; — these and countless other absurdities are not represented in painting or sculpture, or in any explanation; and yet you believe ■< and worship things which have no existence, while you taunt the Christians with being credulous for believing in realities with a faith which pacifies the mind under its influence. The objects of your worship can be shown to have no existence by many proofs, which I do not bring forward here, because, though I could without difficulty discourse philosophi- cally on the construction of the world, it would take too long to do so here. One proof suffices. If these things are real, God must be subject to change, and corruption, and contamination; a supposition as blasphemous as it is irrational. All these things, there- fore, are vain, and false, and unreal. Thus you are much worse than those Pagans, with whom all are familiar, and who still preserve traces of their old customs, of which they themselves are ashamed; for while they wor- ship things which are not gods, you worship things which do not exist.
10. If you think that your doctrines are true because they are unlike the errors of the Pagans, and that we are in error because we perhaps differ more from you than from them, you might as well say that a dead man is in good health because he is not sick; or that good health is undesirable, because it differs; less from sickness than from death. Or if the Pagans should be viewed in many cases as rather dead than sick, )-ou might as well praise the ashes in the tomb because they have no longer the human shape, as compared with the living body, which does not differ so much from a corpse as from ashes. It is thus: we are reproached for having more resem- i blance to the dead body of Paganism than to i the ashes of Manichceism. But in division, j it often happens that a thing is placed in] different classes, according to the point of re-' semblance on which the division proceeds. | For instance, if animals are divided into those' that fly and those that cannot fly, in this di- vision men and beasts are classed together as; Book XX.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICHyEAN.
257 distinct from I)irds, because the}' are both un- able to fly. But if they are divided into ra- tional and irrational, beasts and birds are classed together as distinct from men, for they are both destitute of reason. Faustus did not think of this when he said: There are in fact only two sects, the Gentiles and ourselves, for we are directly opposed to them in oar belief. The opposition he means is this, that the Gentiles believe in a single prin- ciple, whereas the Manichseans believe also iu the principle of the race of darkness. Cer- tainly, according to this division we agree in -eneral with the Pagans. But if we divide all who have a religion into those who worship one God and those who worship many gods, the jSIanicha^ans must be classed along with the Pagans, and we along with the Jews. Tills is another distinction, which may be said to make only two sects. Perhaps you will say that you hold all your gods to be of le substance, which the Pagans do not. j.ut you at least resemble them in assigning ti) your gods different powers, and functions, and employments. One does battle with the ice of darkness; another constructs the irld from the part which is captured; an- 'aer, standing above, has the world in his and; another holds him up from below; an- other turns the wheels of the fires and winds and waters beneath; another, in his circuit of the heavens, gathers with his beams the mem- I'crs of your god from cesspools. Indeed, your gods have innumerable occupations, ac- cording to your fabulous descriptions, which }ou neither explain nor represent in a visible lorm. But again, if men were divided into those who believe that God takes an interest ia human affairs and those who do not, the Pagans and Jews, and you and all heretics that have anything of Christianity, will be classed together, as opposed to the Epicu- ■L-ans, and any others holding similar views. As this is a principle of importance, here again '.vc may say that there are only two sects, and you belong to the same sect as we do. You will hardly venture to dissent from us in the jopinion that God is concerned in human af- liairs, so that in this matter your opposition to jthe Epicureans makes you side with us. Thus, according to the nature of the division, Ahat is in one class at one time, is in another at another time: things joined here are sep- arated there: in some things we are classed with others, and they with us; in other things ive are classed separately, and stand alone. If Faustus thought of this, he would not talk 5ucli eloquent nonsense.
II. But what are we to make of these words 3f Faustus: The Holy Spirit, by his influence 17 I and spiritual infusion, makes the earth con- ceive and bring forth the mortal Jesus, who, as hanging from every tree, is the life and salvation of men? Letting pass for a mo- ment the absurdity of this statement, we ob- serve the folly of believing that the mortal Jesus can be conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit by the earth, but not by the Virgin Mary. Dare you compare the holi- ness of that chaste virgin's womb with any piece of ground where trees and plants grow? Do you pretend to look with abhorrence upon a pure virgin, while you do not shrink from believing that Jesus is produced in gardens watered by the filthy drains of a city? For plants of all kinds spring up and are nour- ished in such moisture. You will have Jesus to be born in this way, while you cry out against the idea of His being born of a virgin. Do you think flesh more unclean than the ex- crements which its nature rejects? Is the filth cleaner than the flesh which expels it? Are you not aware how fields are manured in order to make them productive? Your folly comes to this, that the Holy Spirit, who, according to you, despised the womb of Mary, makes the earth conceive more fruitfully in proportion as it is carefully enriched with animal offscourings. Do you reply that the Holy Spirit preserves His incorruptible purity everywhere? I ask again, Why not also in the virgin's womb? Passing from the conception, you maintain m regard to the mortal Jesus — who, as you say, is born from the earth, which has conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit — that He hangs in the shape of fruit from every tree: so that, besides this pollution. He suffers additional defilement from the flesh of the countless animals that eat the fruit; except, indeed, the small amount that is purified by your eating it. While we believe and confess Christ the Son of God, and the Word of God, to have become flesh without suffering defile- ment, because the divine substance is not de- filed by flesh, as it is not defiled by anything, your fanciful notions would make Jesus to be defiled even as hanging on the tree, before entering the flesh of any animal; for if He were not defiled, there would be no need of His being purified by your eating Him. And if all trees are the cross of Christ, as Faustus seems to impl}' when he says that Jesus hangs from every tree, why do you not pluck the fruit, and so take Jesus down from hanging on the tree to bury Hun in your stomach, which would correspond to the good deed of Joseph of Arimathea, when he took down the true Jesus from the cross to bury Him?'
' John xi.x. 38.
258 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Bock XX.
Why should it be impious to take Christ from the tree, while it is pious to lay Him in the tomb? Perhaps you wish to apply to your- selves the words quoted from the prophet by Paul, " Their throat is an open sepulchre;" ' and so you wait with open mouth till some one comes to use your throat as the best sep- ulchre for Clirist. Once more, how many Christs do you make? Is there one whom you call the mortal Christ, whom the earth conceives and brings forth by the power of the Holy Spirit; and another crucified by the Jews under Pontius Pilate; and a third whom you divide between the sun and the moon? Or is it one and the same person, part of whom is confined in the trees, to be released by the help of the other part which is not con- fined? If this is the case, and you allow that Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, though it is difficult to see how he could have suffered without flesh, as. you say he did, the great question is, with whom he left those ships you speak of, that he might come down and suffer these things, which he certainly could not have suffered without having a body of some kind. A mere spiritual presence could not have made him liable to these sufferings, and in his bodily presence he could not be at the same time in the sun, in the moon, and on the cross. So, then, if he had not a bod}^, he was not crucified; and if he had a body, the question is, where he got it: for, accord- ing to you, all bodies belong to the race of darkness, though you cannot think of the divine substance except as being material. Thus you must say either that Christ was ^crucified without a body, which is utterly ab- surd; or that he was crucified in appearance and not in reality, which is blasphemy; or that all bodies do not belong to the race of darkness, but that the divine substance has also a body, and that not an immortal body, but liable to crucifixion and death, which, again, is altogether erroneous; or that Christ had a mortal body from the race of darkness, so that, while you will not allow that Christ's body came from the Virgin Mary, you derive it from the race of demons. Finally, as in Faustus'statement, in which he alludes in the briefest manner possible to the lengthy stories of Manichaean invention, the earth by