Thus he remained from eternity in the dark- ness of his own misery; and then, instead of admiring a new light which was to drive awav the darkness, he came in contact, to the in- jury of his own light, with another darkness which he had always dreaded. Again, would it not have been much better, I say, not to have given a commandment like God, but even to have received a commandment like Adam, which he would be rewarded for keep- ing and punished for breaking, acting either way by his own free-will, than to be forced by inevitable necessity to admit darkness into his light in spite of himself? Surely it would have been better to have given a precept to human nature, not knowing that it would be- come sinful, than to have been driven by necessity to sin contrary to his own divine nature. Think for a moment, and say how- darkness could be conquered by one who was himself conquered by necessity. Conquered already by this greater enemy, he fought under his conqueror's orders against a less formidable opponent. Would it not have been better not to know where Adam had hid himself, than to have been himself destitute of any means of escape, first from a hard and hateful necessity, and then from a dissimilar and hostile race? Would it not have been better to grudge eternal life to human nature, than to consign to misery the divine nature; to desire the blood and fat of sacrifices, than to be himself slaughtered in so many forms, on account of his mixture with the blood and fat of every victim; to be disturbed by jeal- ousy at these sacrifices being offered to other gods as well as to himself, than to be himself offered on all altars to all devils, as mixed up not only with all fruits, but also with all ani- mals? Would it not have been much better to be affected even with human anger, so as to be enraged against both his friends and his enemies for their sins, than to be himself influenced by fear as well as by anger wherever these passions exist, or than to share in all the sin that is committed, and in all punish- ment that is suffered? For this is the doom of that part of your god which is in confine- ment everywhere, condemned to this by him- self, not as guilty, but in order to conquer his dreaded enemy. Doomed himself to such a fatal necessity, the part of himself which he has given over to condemnation might pardon him, if he were as humble as he is miserable. But how can you pretend to find fault with God for His anger against both friends and enemies when they sin, when the god of your fancies first under compulsion compels his own members to go to be devoured by sin, and then condemns them to remain in dark- Hook XXII.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH.EAN.
281 ness? Though he does this, you say that it will not be in anger. But will he not be ashamed to punish, or to appear to punish, those from whom he should ask pardon in words such as these: " Forgive me, I beseech you. You are my members; could I treat you thus, except from necessity? You know yourselves, that you were sent here because a formidable enemy had arisen; and now you must remain here to prevent his rising again "? Again, is it not better to slay thousands of men for trifling faults, or for nothing, than to cast into the abyss of sin, and to condemn to the punishment of eternal imprisonment, God's own members, his substance — in fact, God himself? It cannot properly be said of the real substance of God that it has the choice of sinning or not sinning, for God's substance is absolutely unchangeable. God cannot sin, as He cannot deny Himself. Man, on the contrary, can sin and deny God, or he can choose not to do so. But suppose the members of your god had, like a rational human soul, the choice of sinning or not sin- ning; they might perhaps be justly punished for heinous offenses by confinement in the mass of darkness. But you cannot attribute to these parts a liberty which you deny to God himself. For if God had not given them up to sin, he would have been forced to sin him- self, by the prevalence of the race of dark- ness. But if there was no danger of being thus forced, it was a sin to send these parts to a place where they incurred this danger. To do so, indeed, from free choice is a crime deserving the torment which your god un- naturally inflicts upon his own parts, more han the conduct of these parts in going by iiis command to a place where they lost the power of living in righteousness. But if God limself was in danger of being forced to sin by invasion and capture, unless he had se- cured himself first by the misconduct and then by the punishment of his own parts, there can have been no free-will either in your i^^od or in his parts. Let him not set him- self up as judge, but confess himself a crimi- nal. For though he was forced against his own will, he professes to pass a righteous sen- tence in condemning those whom he knows to have suffered evil rather than done it; making this profession that he may not be thought of as having been conquered; as if it could do a beggar any good to be called prosperous and happy. Surely it would have been better for your god to have spared neither righteous nor wicked in indiscriminate punishment (which is Faustus' last charge against our God), than to have been so cruel to his own mem- bers,— first giving them up to incurable contamination, and then, as if that was not enough, accusing them falsely of misconduct. Faustus declares that they justly suffer this severe and eternal punishment, because they allowed themselves to be led astray from their original brightness, and became hostile to sacred light. But the reason of this, as Faustus says, was that they were so greedily devoured in the first assault of the princes of darkness, that they were unable to recovei* themselves, or to separate themselves from the hostile principle. These souls, therefore, did no evil themselves, but in all this were innocent sufferers. The real agent was he who sent them away from himself into this wretchedness. They suffered more from their father than from their enemy. Their father sent them into all this misery; while their enemy desired them as something good, wishing not to hurt them, but to enjoy them. The one injured them knowingly, the other in ignorance. This god was so weak and helpless that he could not otherwise secure himself first against an enemy threatening attack, and then against the same enemy in confinement. Let him, then, not condemn those parts whose obedience defended him, and whose death secures his safety. If he could not avoid the conflict, why slander his defenders? When these parts allowed them- selves to be led astray from their original brightness, and became hostile to sacred light, this must have been from the force of the enemy; and if they were forced against their will, they are innocent; while, if they could have resisted had they chosen, there is no need of the origin of evil in an imaginary evil nature, since it is to be found in free-will. Their not resisting, when they could have done so, is plainly their own fault, and not owing to any force from without For, sup- posing them able to do a thing, to do which is right, while not to do it is great and hein- ous sin, their not doing it is their own choice. So, then, if they choose not to do it, the fault is in their will not in necessity. The origin of sin is in the will; therefore in the will is also the origin of evil, both in the sense of acting against a just precept, and in the sense of suffering under a just sentence. There is thus no reason why, in your search for the origin of evil, you should fall into so great an evil as that of calling a nature so rich in good things the nature of evil, and of attributing the terrible evil of necessity to the nature of perfect good, before any commixture with evil. The cause of this erroneous belief is your pride, which you need not have unless you choose; but in your wish to defend at all hazards the error into which you have fallen.
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[Book XXII.
you take away the origin of evil from free- will, and place it in a fabulous nature of evil. And thus you come at last to say, that the souls which are to be doomed to eternal con- f^.nement in the mass of darkness became enemies to sacred light not from choice, but by necessity; and to make your god a judge with whom it is of no use to prove, in behalf of your clients, that they were under compul- sion, and a king who will make no allowance for your brethren, his own sons and members, whose hostility against you and against him- self you ascribe not to choice, but to necessity. What shocking cruelty! unless you proceed in the next place to defend your god, as also acting not from choice, but by necessity. So, if there could be found another judge free from necessity, who could decide the question on the principles of equity, he would sentence your god to be bound to this mass, not by being fastened on the outside, but by being shut up inside along with the formidable enemy. The first in the guilt of necessity oueht to be first in the sentence of condemna- tion. Would it not be much better, then, in comparison with such a god as this, to choose the god whom we indeed do not worship, but whom 3^ou think or pretend to think we worship? Though he spares not his servants, whether righteous or sinful, making' no proper separation, and not distinguishing between punishment and discipline, is he not better than the god who spares not his own members though innocent, if necessity is no crime, or guilty from their obedience to him, if neces- sity itself is criminal; so that they are con- demned eternally by him, along with whom they should have been released, if any liberty was recovered by the victory, while he should have been condemned along with them if the victory reduced the force of necessity even so far as to give this small amount of force to justice? Thus the god whom you represent us as worshipping, though he is not the one true God whom we really worship, is far better than your god. Neither, indeed, has any ex- istence; but both are the creatures of your imaginations. But, according to your own representations, the one whom you call ours, and find fault with, is better than the one whom you call your own, and whom you wor- ship.'
23. So also the patriarchs and prophets v/hom you cry out against are not the men whom we honor, but men whose characters are drawn from your fancy, prompted by ill- will. And yet even thus as you paint them, I [ Augustin certainly makes it appear that the God in the Old Testament is not so bad as the God of the Manichaeans, yet he cannot be said to reach a complete theodicy. — A. H, N.]
I will not be content with showing them to be superior to your elect, who keep all the pre- cepts of Manichgeus, but will prove their superiority to your god himself. Before proving this, however, I must, with the help of God, defend our holy fathers the patriarchs and prophets against your accusations, by a clear exposition of the truth as opposed to the carnality of your hearts. As for you Mani- chccans, it would be enough to say that the faults you impute to our fathers are prefera- ble to what you praise iri your own, and to complete your shame by adding that your god can be proved far inferior to our fathers as you describe them. This would be a suffi- cient reply for you. But as, even apart from your perversities, some minds are of them- selves disturbed when comparing the life of the prophets in the Old Testament with that of the apostles in the New, — not discerning between the manner of the time when the promise was under a veil, and that of the time when the promise is revealed, — I must first of all reply to those who either have the bold- ness to pride themselves as superior in tem- perance to the prophets, or quote the prophets in defence of their own bad conduct.
24. First of all, then, not only the speech of these men, but their life also, was pro- phetic; and the whole kingdom of the He- brews was like a great prophet, corresponding' to the greatness of the Person prophesied. So, as regards those Hebrews who were made wise in heart by divine instruction, we may discover a prophecy of the coming of Christ and of the Church, both in what they said and in what they did; and the same is true as re- gards the divine procedure towards the whole nation as a body. For, as the apostle says, "all these things were our examples."
25. Those who find fault with the prophets, accusing them of adultery for instance, in ac- tions which are above their comprehension, are like those Pagans who profanely charge Christ with folly or madness because He looked for fruit from a tree out of the season;* or with childishness, because He stooped down and wrote on the ground, and, after answering the people who were questioning Him, began writing again. ^ Such critics are incapable of understanding that certain virtues in great minds resemble closely the vices of little minds, not in reality, but in appearance. Such criticism of the great is like that of boys at school, whose learning consists in the im- portant rule, that if the nominative is in the singular, the verb must also be in the singular; and so they find fault with the best Latin 2 Matt. xxi.
19.
3 John viii. 6-8.
Book XXIL] REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH^AN.
283 author, because he says, Pars in frusta secant.^ He should have written, say they, secat. And again, knowing that religio is spelt with one /, they blame him for writing relUgio, when he says, Rclligionc patrum." Hence it may with reason be said, that as the poetical usage of words differs from the solecisms and barbar- isms of the unlearned, so, in their own way, the figurative actions of the prophets differ from the impure actions of the vicious. Ac- cordingly, as a boy guilty of a barbarism would be whipped if he pled the usage of Vir- gil; so any one quoting the example of Abra- ham begetting a son from Hagar, in defence of his own sinful passion for his wife's hand- maid, ought to be corrected not by caning only, but by severe scourging, that he may not suffer the doom of adulterers in eternal l)unishment. This indeed is a comparison of great and important subjects with trifles; and it is not intended that a peculiar usage in speech should be put on a level with a sacra- ment, or a solecism with adultery. Still, allowing for the difference in the character of the subjects, what is called learning or ignor- ance in the proprieties and improprieties of speech, resembles wisdom or the want of it in reference to the grand moral distinction between virtue and vice.^ 26. Instead of entering' on the distinctions between the praiseworthy and the blame- worthy, the criminal and the innocent, the dangerous and the harmless, the guilty and the guiltless, the desirable and the undesirable, which are all illustrations of the distinction between sin and righteousness, we must first consider what sin is, and then examine the actions of the saints as recorded in the holy books, that, if we find these saints described as sinning, we may if possible discover the true reason for keeping these sins in memory liy putting them on record. Again, if we find things recorded which, though they are not sins, appear so to the foolish and the malevo- lent, and in fact do not exhibit any virtues, liere also we have to see why these things are ])ut into the Scriptures which we believe to contain wholesome doctrine as a guide in the present life, and a title to the inheritance of the future. As regards the examples of right- eousness found among the acts of the saints, the propriety of recording these must be plain even to the ignorant. The question is about those actions the mention of which may seem useless if they are neither righteous nor sin- ful, or even dangerous if the actions are really sinful, as lending people to imitate them, be- 3 ( riiis coinpari^ion of the objectors to the Old Testament to hlunderinj; school-boys is very fine. — A. H. X.]
cause they are not condemned in these books, and so may be supposed not to be sinful, or because, though they are condemned, men may copy them from the idea that they must be venial if saints did them.
27. Sin, then, is any transgression in deed, or word, or desire, of the eternal law. And the eternal law is the divine order or will of God, which requires the preservation of natural order, and forbids the breach of it. But what is this natural order in man? Man, we know, consists of soul and bod}- but so does a beast. Again, it is plain that in the order of nature the soul is superior to the body. Moreover, in the soul of man there is reason, which is not in a beast. Therefore, as the soul is superior to the body, so in the soul itself the reason is superior by the law of nature to the other parts which are found also in beasts; and in reason itself, which is partly contemplation and partly action, contempla- tion is unquestionably the superior part. The object of contemplation is the image of God, by which we are renewed through faith to sight. Rational action ought therefore to be subject to the control of contemplation, which is exercised through faith while we are absent from the Lord, as it will be hereafter through sight, when we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.'* Then in a spiritual body we shall by His grace be made equal to angels, when we put on the garment of im- mortality and incorruption, with which this mortal and corruptible shall be clothed, that death may be swallowed up of victory, when righteousness is perfected through grace. For the holy and lofty angels have also their contemplation and action. They require of themselves the performance of the commands of Him whom they contemplate, whose eternal government they freely because sweetly obey. We, on the other hand, whose body is dead because of sin, till God quicken also our mortal bodies by His Spirit dwelling in us, live righteously in our feeble measure, ac- cording to the eternal law in which the law of nature is preserved, when we live by that faith unfeigned whicli works by love, having in a good conscience a hope of immortality and in- corruption laid up in heaven, and of the per- fecting of righteousness to the measure of an inexpressible satisfaction, for which in our pilgrimage we must hunger and thirst, while we walk by faith and not by sight.
28. A man, therefore, who acts in obedience to the faith which obeys God, restrains all mortal affections, and keeps them within the natural limit, regulating his desires so as to 4 I John iii. 2.
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[Book XXII.
put the higher before the lower. If there was no pleasure in what is unlawful, no one would sin. To sin is to indulge tliis pleasure instead of restraining it. And by unlawful is meant what is forbidden by the law in which the oriler of nature is preserved. It is a great question whether there is any rational creature for which there is no pleasure in what is un- lawful. If there is such a class of creatures, it does not include man, nor that angelic nature which abode not in the truth. These rational creatures were so made, that they had the potentiality of restraining their desires from the unlawful; and in not doing this they sinned. Great, then, is the creature man, for he is restored by this potentiality, by which, if he had so chosen, he would not have fallen. And great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, who created man. For He created also inferior natures which cannot sin, and superior natures which will not sin. Beasts do not sin, for their nature agrees with the eternal law from being subject to it, without being in possession of it. And again, angels do not sin, because their heavenly nature is so in possession of the eternal law that God is the only object of its desire, and they obey His will without any experience of temptation. But man, whose life on this earth is a trial on account of sin, subdues to himself what he has in common with beasts, and subdues to God what he has in common with angels; till, when righteousness is perfected and immor- tality attained, he shall be raised from among beasts and ranked with angels.
29. The exercise or indulgence of the bod- ily appetites is intended to secure the contin- ued existence and the invigoration of the in- dividual or of the species. If the appetites go beyond this, and carry the man, no longer master of himself, beyond the limits of tem- perance, they become unlawful and shameful lusts, which severe discipline must subdue. But if this unbridled course ends in plunging the man into such a depth of evil habits that he supposes that there will be no punishment of his sinful passions, and so refuses the wholesome discipline of confession and re- pentance by which he might be rescued; or, from a still worse insensibility, justifies his own indulgences in profane opposition to the eternal law of Providence; and if he dies in this state, that unerring law sentences him now not to correction, but to damnation.
30. Eeferring, then, to the eternal law which enjoins the preservation of natural or- der and forbids the breach of it, let us see how our father Abraham sinned, that is, how he broke this law, in the things which Faus- tus has charged him with as highly crimmal.
In his irrational craving to have children, says Faustus, and not believing God, who promised that his wife Sara should have a son, he defiled himself with a mistress. But here Faustus, in his irrational desire to find fault, both discloses the impiety of his heresy, and in his error and ignorance praises Abraham's intercourse with the handmaid. For as the eternal law — that is, the will of God the Creator of all — for the preservation of the natural order, permits the indulgence of the bodily appetite under the guidance of reason in sexual intercourse, not for the grat- ification of passion, but for the continuance of the race through the procreation of chil- dren; so, on the contrary, the unrighteous law of the Manichaeans, in order to prevent their god, whom the}' bewail as confined in all seeds, from suffering still closer confine- ment in the womb, requires married people not on any account to have children, their great desire being to liberate their god. In- stead, therefore, of an irrational craving in Abraham to have children, we find in Man- ichccus an irrational fancy against having children. So the one preserved the natural order by seeking in marriage only the pro- duction of a child; while the other, influenced by his heretical notions, thought no evil could be greater than the confinement of his god.
31. So, again, when Faustus says that the wife's being privy to her husband's conduct made the matter worse, while he is prompted only by the uncharitable wish to reproach Abraham and his wife, he really, without in- tending it, speaks in praise of both. Fori Sara did not connive at any criminal action in her husband for the gratification of his un- lawful passions; but from the same natural desire for children that he had, and know- ing her own barrenness, she warrantably 1 claimed as her own the fertility of her hand- maid; not consenting with sinful desires in her husband, but requesting of him what it was proper in him to grant. Nor was it the| request of proud assumption; for every one knows that the duty of a wife is to obey her] husband. But in reference to the body, we are told by the apostle that the wife has power I over her husband's bod}'-, as he has over hers;' so that, while in all other social matters the j wife ought to obey her husband, in this one matter of their bodily connection as man and wife their power over one another is mutual, — the inan over the woman, and the woman over the man. So, when Sara could not have I children of her own, she wished to have them