the power of the Holy Spirit conceives and brings forth the mortal Jesus, who, hanging from every tree, is the life and salvation of men, why should this Saviour be represent- ed by whatever is hanging, because he hung on the tree, and not by whatever is born, because he was born? But if ' Rom. iii. 13.
you mean that the Jesus on the trees, anc the Jesus crucified under Pontius Pilate, and the Jesus divided between tlie sun anc the moon, are all one and the same substance, why do you not give the name of Jesus to your whole host of deities? Why should not your World-holder be Jesus too, and Atlas and the King of Honour, and the Mighty Spirit, and the First Man, and all the rest, with their various names and occupations?
12. So, with regard to the Holy Spirit, how can you say that he is the third person, when the persons you mention are innumerable? Or why is he not Jesus himself? And why does Faustus mislead people, in trying to make out an agreement between himself and true Christians, from whom he differs only too widely, by saying. We worship one God un- der the threefold appellation of the Almighty God the Father, Christ his Son, and the Holy Spirit? Why is the appellation only threefold, instead of being manifold? And why is the distinction in appellation only, and not in re-j ality, if there are as many persons as ther are names? For it is not as if you gave thre^ names to the same thing, as the same weapon may be called a short sword, a dagger, or a dirk; or as you give the name of moon, and the lesser ship, and the luminary of nighty and so on, to the same thing. For you cannot say that the First Man is the same as the Mighty Spirit, or as the World-Holder, or as, the giant Atlas. They are all distinct per- sons, and you do not call any of them Christ. How can there be one Deity with opposite functions? Or why should not Christ himself be the single person, if in one substance Christ! hangs on the trees, and was persecuted by the Jews, and exists in the sun and moon? The, fact is, your fancies are all astra)', and are no better than the dreams of insanity.
13. How can Faustus think that we resem, ble the Manichseans in attaching sacredness to bread and wine, when they consider it sac- rilege to taste wine? They acknowledge their; god in the grape, but not in the cup; perhaps they are shocked at his being trampled on and bottled. It is not any bread and winei that we hold sacred as a natural production, as if Christ were confined in corn or in vines,, as the Manichccans fancy, but what is truly: consecrated as a symbol. What is not con-, secrated, though it is bread and wine, is only, nourishment or refreshment, with no sacred- ness about it; although we bless and thanki God for every gift, bodily as well as spiritual.! According to your notion, Christ is confined in everything you eat, and is released by di- gestion from the additional confinement of, your intestines. So, when you eat, your god.
JOOK XX.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH/EAN.
259 suffers; and when you digest, you suffer from his recovery. When he fills you, your gain is his loss. This might be considered kind- ness on his part, because he suffers in you for your benefit, were it not that he gains freedom l)y escaping and leaving you empty. There is not the least resemblance between our rev- erence for the bread and wine, and your doc- trines, which have no truth in them. To compare the two is even more foolish than to say, as some do, that in the bread and wine we worship Ceres and Bacchus. I refer to tliis now, to show where you got your silly idea that our fathers kept the Sabbath in honor of Saturn. For as there is no connec- tion with the worship of the Pagan deities Ceres and Bacchus in our observance of the sacrament of the bread and wine, which you approve so highly that you wish to resemble us in it, so there was no subjection to Saturn in the case of our fathers, who observed the rest of the Sabbath in a manner suitable to prophetic times.
14. You might have found a resemblance in your religion to that of the Pagans as re- L,Qrds Hyle [matter], which the Pagans often speak of. You, on the contrary, maintain that you are directly opposed to them in your I)elief in the evil principle which your teacher in theology calls Hyle. But here you only show your ignorance, and, with an affectation of learning, use this word without knowing what it means. The Greeks, when speaking of I nature, give the name Hyle to the subject-mat- jter of things, which has no form of its own, but admits of all bodily forms, and is known only I through these changeable phenomena, not be- ing itself an object of sensation or perception. Some Gentiles, indeed, erroneously make this matter co-eternal with God, as not being de- rived from Him, though the bodily forms are. In this manifest error you resemble the Pagans, for you hold that Hyle has a princi- ple of its own, and does not come from God. It is only ignorance that leads you to deny this resemblance. In saying that Hyle has no form of its own, and can take its forms only from God, the Pagans come near to the truth which we beheve in contradistinction from your errors. Not knowing what Hyle or the subject-matter of things is, you make it the irace of darkness, in which you place not only innumerable bodily forms of five different ikinds, but also a formative mind. Such, in- jdeed, is your ignorance or insanity, that you call this mind Hyle, and make it give forms, instead of taking them. If there were such a formative mind as you speak of, and bodily elements capable of form, the word Hyle would properly be applicable to the bodily elements, which would be the matter to be formed by the mind, which you make the principle of evil. Even this would not be a quite accurate use of the word Hyle, which has no form of any kind; whereas these ele- ments, although capable of new forms, have already the form of elements, and belong to different kinds. Still this use of the word would not be so much amiss, notwithstanding your ignorance; for it would thus be applied, as it properly is, to that which takes form, and not to that which gives it. Even here, however, your folly and impiety would appear in tracing so much that is good to the evil principle, from your not knowing that all na- tures of 'every kind, all forms in their propor- tion, and all weights in their order, can come only from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As it is, you know neither what Hyle is, nor what evil is. Would that I could per- suade you to refrain from misleading people still more ignorant than yourselves!
15. Every one must see the folly of your boasting of superiority to the Pagans because they use altars and temples, images and sac- rifices and incense, in the worship of God, which you do not. As if it were not better to build an altar and offer sacrifice to a stone, which has some kind of existence, than to employ a heated imagination in worshipping things which have no existence at all. And what do you mean by saying that you are a rational temple of God? Can that be God's temple which is partly the construction of the devil? And is this not true of you, as you say that all your members and your whole body were formed by the evil principle which you call Hyle, and that part of this formative mind dwells in the body along with part of your god? And as this part of your god is bound and confined, you should be called the prison of God rather than his temple. Per- haps it is your soul that is the temple of God, as you have it from the region of light. But you generally call your soul not a temple, but a part or member of God. So, when you say you are the temple of God, it must be in your l)ody, which, you say, was formed by the devil. Thus you blaspheme the temple of God, calling it not only the workmanship of Satan, but the prison-house of God, The apostle, on the other hand, says: " The tem- ple of God is holy, which temple ye are." And to show that this refers not merely to the soul, he says expressly: " Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God? " ' You call the workmanship of devils ' I Cor. iii. 17, and vi. 19.
26o THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Book XX.
the temple of God, and there, to use Faustus' words, you place Christ, the Son of God, the living image of living majesty. Your impiety may well contrive a fabulous temple for a fabulous Christ. The image you speak of must be so called, because it is the creature of your imagination.
i6. If your mind is an altar, you see whose altar it is. You may see from the very doctrines and duties in which you say you are trained. You are taught not to give food to a beggar; and so your altar smokes with the sacrifice of cruelty. Such altars the Lord destroys; for in words quoted from the law He tells us what offering pleases God: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." Observe on what occasion the Lord uses these words. It was when, in passing through a field, the disciples plucked the ears of corn because they were hungry. Your doctrine would lead you to call this murder. Your mind is an altar, not of God, but of lying devils, by whose doctrines the evil conscience is seared as with a hot iron,' calling murder what the truth calls innocence. For in His words to the Jews, Christ by anticipation deals a fatal blow to you: " If ye had known what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." ^ 17. Nor can you say that you honor God with sacrifices in the shape of pure and simple prayers: for, in your low, dishonoring notions about tlie divine nature and substance, you make your god to be the victim in the sacri- fices of Pagans; so far are you from pleasing the true God with your sacrifices. For you hold that God is confined not only in trees and plants, or in the human body, but also in the flesh of animals, which contaminates Him with its impurity. And how can your soul give praise to God, when you actually reproach Him by calling your soul a particle of His substance taken captive by the race of darkness; as if God could not maintain the conflict except by this corruption of His mem- bers, and this dishonorable captivity? In- stead of honoring God in your prayers, you insult Him. For what sin did you commit, when you belonged to Him, that you should be thus punished by the god you cry to, not because you left Him sinfully of your own choice; for he himself gave you to His ene- mies, to obtain peace for His kingdom? You are not even given as hostages to be honor- ably guarded. Nor is it as when a shepherd lays a snare to catch a wild beast: for he does not put one of his own members in the snare.
I I Tim. iv. 2.
I I Tim. iv. 2.
2 Matt, xii. 7.
but some animal from his flock; and gener- ally, so that the wild beast is caught before the animal is hurt. You, though you are the members of your god, are given to the enemy, whose ferocity you keep off from your god only by being contaminated with their impur- ity, infected with their corruptions, without any fault of your own. You cannot in your prayers use the words: " Free us, O Lord, for the glory of Thy name; and for Thy name's sake pardon our sins.'^^ Your prayer is: " Free us by Thy skill, for we suffer here oppression, and torture, and pollution, only that Thou mayest mourn unmolested in Thy kingdom." These are words of reproach, not of entreaty. Nor can you use the words taught us by the Master of truth: " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."* For who are the debtors who have sinned against you? If it is the race of darkness, you do not forgive their debts, but make them be utterly cast out and shut up in eternal impri- sonment. And how can God forgive your debts, when He rather sinned against you by sending you into such a state, than you against Him, whom you obeyed by going? If. this was not a sin in Him, because He was compelled to do it, this excuse must apply to you, now that you have been overthrown in the conflict, more than to Him before the con- flict began. You suft'er now from the mix- ture of evil, which was not the case with Him when nevertheless He was compelled to send you. So either He requires that you should forgive Him his debt; or, if He is not in debt to you, still less are you to Him. It appears that your sacrifices and your pure and simple prayers are false and vile blasphemies.
18. How is it, by the way, that you use the words temple, altar, sacrifice, for the purpose of commending your own practices? If such things can be spoken of as properly belonging to true religion, they must constitute the true worship of the true God. And if there is such a thing as true sacrifice to the true God, which is implied in the expression divine honors, there must be some one true sacrifice of which the rest are imitations. On the one hand, we have the spurious imitations in the case of false and lying gods, that is, of devils, who proudly demand divine honors from their de- luded votaries, as is or was the case in the temples and idols of the Gentiles, On the other hand, we have the prophetic intima- tions of one most true sacrifice to be offered for the sins of all believers, as in the sacrifices enjoined by God on our fathers; along with which there was also the svmbolical anointing 3 Ps. Ixxix. g.
4 Matt. vi. 12.
liOOK XX.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH.^AN.
261 ' typical of Christ, as tlie name Christ itself means anointed. The animal sacrifices, there- ' fdre, presumptuously claimed by devils, were n imitation of the true sacrifice which is due only to the one true God, and which Christ alone offered on His altar. Thus the apostle says: "The sacrifices which the Gentiles (iffer, they offer to devils, and not to God."' He does not find fault with sacrifices, but with offering to devils. The Hebrews, again, in their animal sacrifices, which they offered to God in many varied forms, suitably to the significance of the institution, typified the sacrifice offered by Christ. This sacrifice is also commemorated by Christians, in the sa- cred offering and participation of the body and lilood of Christ. The Manichaeans under- stand neither the sinfulness of the Gentile sacrifices, nor the importance of the Hebrew sacrifices, nor the use of the ordinance of the Christian sacrifice. Their own errors are the offering they present to the devil who has de- ceived them. And thus they depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and to doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy. 19. It may be well that Faustus, or at least that those who are charmed with Faustus' writings, should know that the doctrine of a single principle did not come to us from the Gentiles; for the belief in one true God, from, whom every kind of nature is derived, is a ])art of the original truth retained among the Gentiles, notwithstanding their having fallen away to many false gods. For the Gentile philosophers had the knowledge of God, be- cause, as the apostle says, "the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without ex- , cuse. " But, as the apostle adds, "when they I knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart w^as darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, j they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and I four-footed beasts, and creeping things. "'^ ■f^hese are the idols of the Gentiles, which they cannot explain except by referring to the creatures made by God; so that this very explanation of their idolatry, on which the more enlightened Gentiles were wont to pride 'themselves as a proof of their superiority, shows the truth of the following words of the npostle: "They worshipped and served the I creature rather than the Creator, who is ' I Cor. -v. 30.
Rom. i. 20-23.
blessed forever." 3 Where you differ from the Gentiles, you are in error; where you re- semble them, you are worse than they. You do not believe, as they do, in a single princi- ple; and so you fall into the impiety of be- lieving the substance of the one true God to be liable to subjugation and corruption. As regards the worship of a plurality of gods, the doctrine of lying devils has led the Gen- tiles to worship many idols, and you to wor- ship many phantasms.
20. We do not turn the sacrifices of the Gentiles into love-feasts, as Faustus says we do. Our love-feasts are rather a substitute for the sacrifice spoken of by the Lord, in the words already quoted: "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." At our love-feasts the poor obtain vegetable or animal food; and so the creature of God is used, as far as it is suitable, for the nourishment of man, who is also God's creature. You have been led by lying devils, not in self-denial, but in blas- phemous error, "to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be re- ceived with thanksgiving.'''* In return for the bounties of the Creator, you ungrate- fully insult Him with your impiety; and be- cause in our love-feasts flesh is often given to the poor, you compare Christian charity to Pagan sacrifices. This indeed, is another point in which you resemble some Pagans. You consider it a crime to kill animals, be- cause you think that the souls of men pass into them; which is an idea found in the writ- ings of some Gentile philosophers, although their successors appear to have thought dif- ferently. But here again you are most in error: for they dreaded slaughtering a rela- tive in the animal; but you dread the slaugh- ter of your god, for you hold even the souls of animals to be his members.
21. As to our paying honor to the memory of the martyrs, and the accusation of Faustus, that we worship them instead of idols, I should not care to answer such a charge, were it not for the sake of showing how Faustus, in his desire to cast reproach on us, has overstepped the INIanich^an inventions, and has fallen heedlessly into a popular notion found in Pagan poetry, although he is so anxious to be distinguished from the Pagans. For in saying that we have turned the idols into martyrs, he speaks of our worshipping them with sim- ilar rites, and appeasing the shades of the departed with wine and food. Do you, then.
3 Rom. i. 25.
4 I Tim. iv. 3, 4.
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[Book XX.
believe in siiades? We never heard you speak of such things, nor have we read of them in your books. In fact, you generally oppose such ideas: for you tell us that the souls of the dead, if they are wicked, or not purified, are made to pass through various changes, or suffer punishment still more severe; while the good souls are placed in ships, and sail through heaven to that imaginary region of light which they died fighting for. According to you, then, no souls remain near the bury- ing-place of the body; and how can there be any shades of the departed? What and where are they? Faustus' love of evil-speak- ing has made him forget his own creed; or perhaps he spoke in his sleep about ghosts, and did not wake up even when he saw his words in writing. It is true that Christians pay religious honor to the memory of the martyrs, both to excite us to imitate them, and to obtain a share in their merits, and the assistance of their prayers. But we build altars not to any martyr, but to the God of martyrs, although it is to the memory of the martyrs. No one officiating at the altar in the saints' burying-place ever says. We bring an offering to thee, O Peter! or O Paul! or O Cyprian! The offering is made to God, who gave the crown of martyrdom, while it is in memory of those thus crowned. The emotion is increased by the associations of the place, and love is excited both towards those who are our examples, and towards Him by whose help we may follow such ex- amples. We regard the martyrs with the same affectionate intimacy that we feel to- wards holy men of God in this life, when we know that their hearts are prepared to endure the same suffering for the truth of the gospel. There is more devotion in our feeling towards the martyrs, because we know that their con- flict is over; and we can speak with greater con- fidence in praise of those already victors in heaven, than of those still combating here. What is properly divine worship, which the Greeks call lairia, and for which there is no word in Latin, both in doctrine and in prac- tice, we give only to God. To this worship belongs the offering of sacrifices; as we see in the word idolatry, which means the giving of this worship to idols. Accordingly we never offer, or require any one to offer, sac- rifice to a martyr, or to a holy soul, or to any angel. Any one falling into this error is in- structed by doctrine, either in the way of cor- rection or of caution. For holy beings them- selves, whether saints or angels, refuse to accept what they know to be due to God alone. We see this in Paul and Barnabas, when the men of Lycaonia wished to sacrifice to them as gods, on account of the miracles they performed. They rent their clothes, and restrained the people, crying out to them, and persuading them that they were not gods. We see it also in the angels, as we read in the Apocalypse that an angel would not allow himself to be worshipped, and said to his worshipper, "I am thy fellow- servant, and of thy brethen." ' Those who claim this wor- ship are proud spirits, the devil and his an- gels, as we see in all the temples and rites of the Gentiles. Some proud men, too, have copied their example; as is related of some kings of Babylon. Thus the holy Daniel was accused and persecuted, because when the king made a decree that no petition should be made to any god, but only to the king, he was found worshipping and praying to his own God, that is, the one true God.^ As for those who drink to excess at the feasts of the martyrs, we of course condemn their conduct; for to do so even in their own houses would be contrary to sound doctrine. But we must try to amend what is bad as well as prescribe what is good, and must of necessity bear for a time with some things that are not according to our teaching. The rules of Christian conduct are not to be taken from the indulgences of the intemperate or the infirmities of the weak. Still, even in this, the guilt of intemperance is much less than that of impiety. To sacrifice to the martyrs, even fasting, is worse than to go home intoxicated from their feast: to sacri- fice to the martyrs, I say, which is a different thing from sacrificing to God in memory of the martyrs, as we do constantly, in the man- ner required since the revelation of the New Testament, for this belongs to the worship or latria which is due to God alone. But it is vain to try to make these heretics under- stand the full meaning of tliese words of the Psalmist: " He that offereth the sacrifice of praise glorifieth me, and in this way will I show him my salvation. "3 Before the com- ing of Christ, the flesh and blood of this sacrifice were foreshadowed in the animals slain; in the passion of Christ the types were fulfilled by the true sacrifice; after the as- cension of Christ, this sacrifice is commem- orated in the sacrament. Between the sacri- fices of the Pagans and of the Hebrews there