Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.52–22.66

For although I think that Jacob's two free wives belong to the New Testament, in which we have been called to freedom, yet they are not two for nothing—unless perhaps because, as can be noticed and found in the Scriptures, two lives are proclaimed to us in the body of Christ: one temporal, in which we labour; the other eternal, in which we shall contemplate the delight of God. The Lord made known the one by his passion, the other by his resurrection. The names of those women also prompt us to understand this. For they say that Leah means “labouring,” and Rachel “the beginning seen,” or “the word from which the beginning is seen.” The action, then, of human and mortal life, in which we live by faith, doing many laborious things, uncertain how they will turn out for the benefit of those we wish to help, is Leah, Jacob's first wife; and so she is recorded also as having weak eyes; for the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our forethought uncertain. But the hope of the eternal contemplation of God, having a sure and delightful understanding of truth, is Rachel; whence she is also said to be of good countenance and beautiful appearance. For every godly and studious person loves her, and for her sake serves the grace of God, by which our sins, though they be as scarlet, are made white as snow. For Laban means “whitening,” and Jacob served him for Rachel. For no one turns to serve righteousness under the grace of the forgiveness of sins except in order to live at rest in the Word, from which is seen the beginning, which is God. So it is for Rachel, not for Leah. For who, after all, has loved in the works of righteousness the labour of actions and sufferings? Who has sought that life for its own sake? Just as Jacob did not seek Leah, but nevertheless, when she was substituted for him in the night, he embraced her for begetting and experienced her fruitfulness. For the Lord, since she could not be loved for her own sake, first made her to be endured, so that Rachel might be reached, and then commended her for her sons. So indeed every useful servant of God, placed under the grace of the whitening of his sins, what else has he meditated on in his conversion, what else carried in his heart, what else loved but the teaching of wisdom? Many think they will gain and receive it at once, as soon as they have exercised themselves in the seven precepts of the law which concern love of neighbour, so that no man is harmed, that is: “Honour your father and mother; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not covet your neighbour's wife; you shall not covet your neighbour's property.” When he has kept these as far as he could, after the endurance of labour has cleaved to him through various temptations, as through the nights of this world, in place of the longed-for and hoped-for most beautiful delight of teaching—as though Leah were joined to him unexpectedly in place of Rachel—he bears her too, so as to reach the other, if he loves perseveringly, receiving seven other precepts—as though it were said to him: serve another seven years for Rachel—that he be poor in spirit, meek, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker. For a man would wish, if it were possible, to reach at once the delights of beautiful and perfect wisdom without any endurance of labour, which must be embraced in doing and suffering; but this is not possible in the land of the dying. This is what seems to be signified by what was said to Jacob: “It is not the custom in our place for the younger to marry before the elder”; for she who is first in time is not absurdly called the elder. And in the right education of man the labour of doing what is just comes before the pleasure of understanding what is true.

To this point applies what is written: “You have desired wisdom; keep the commandments, and the Lord will give her to you”—commandments, certainly, that pertain to righteousness; and the righteousness which is from faith, which moves amid the uncertainties of temptations, so that by godly belief in what it does not yet understand it may also gain the merit of understanding. For as much force as there is in what I just mentioned is written, “You have desired wisdom; keep the commandments, and the Lord will give her to you,” so much, I think, there is also in this: “Unless you believe, you will not understand,” so that righteousness is shown to belong to faith, and understanding to wisdom. Accordingly, in those who burn with a great love of clear truth, the zeal is not to be disapproved, but recalled to order, so that it begins from faith and strives by good conduct to reach where it is heading. For in what it is engaged in there is laborious virtue; in what it seeks, luminous wisdom. “What need is there,” someone says, “to believe what is not shown me plainly? Bring forth some word by which I may see the beginning of all things.” For it is this that the rational mind most of all and first burns for, if it is a lover of truth. Let him be answered: what you desire is beautiful indeed and most worthy to be loved, but Leah marries first, and Rachel afterwards. Let this ardour, then, avail for this, that the order be not refused but rather endured, without which one cannot reach what is loved with so great ardour. And when it has been reached, one will have together in this world not only beautiful understanding but also laborious righteousness. For however keenly and purely the unchangeable good is perceived by mortals, still the body, which is corruptible, weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things. We must strain towards the one thing, then, but for its sake many things must be borne.

So Jacob's two wives are free; for both are daughters of the forgiveness of sins, that is, of the whitening, which is Laban. Yet one is loved and the other endured. But the one endured is made fruitful first and more abundantly, so that, if not for her own sake, she may at least be loved for her sons. For the labour of the righteous has its greatest fruit in those whom they beget for the kingdom of God amid many temptations and tribulations by preaching the gospel; and those for whose sake they are in labours more abundantly, in stripes beyond measure, in deaths often, for whose sake they have fightings without and fears within, they call their joy and crown. And these are born to them more easily and copiously from that word of faith by which they preach Christ crucified, and whatever of his humanity is more quickly grasped by human thought and does not trouble even Leah's weak eyes. But Rachel, clear of sight, is beside herself for God, and sees in the beginning the Word, God with God, and wishes to bear and cannot, because “who will declare his generation?” Accordingly, the life devoted to the pursuit of contemplation, in order to behold with the not weak eyes of the mind the things invisible to the flesh, understood through the things that are made, and to perceive inexpressibly the eternal power and divinity of God, wishes to be free of all business, and so is barren. For in seeking the leisure in which the pursuits of contemplation are kindled, it does not adapt itself to the weakness of men who desire to be helped in their various afflictions. But because it too burns with the love of begetting—for it wishes to teach what it knows and not to travel with consuming envy—it sees its sister abounding in sons through the labour of doing and suffering, and grieves that men run to that virtue by which their weaknesses and needs are provided for rather than to that from which something divine and unchangeable is learned. This grief seems to be figured in what is written: “And Rachel envied her sister.” Accordingly, since a clear and pure understanding of that substance which is not body, and therefore does not belong to the sense of the flesh, cannot be expressed in words uttered by the flesh, the teaching of wisdom chooses to suggest divine things, to be thought of in whatever way, through any bodily images and likenesses, rather than to cease from the duty of teaching such things; just as Rachel chose to receive children from her husband and her maidservant rather than remain entirely without sons. For Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant, is said to mean “grown old”; for from the old life given to the fleshly senses bodily images are thought of, even when something is heard of the spiritual and unchangeable substance of the divinity.

Leah too receives sons from her maidservant, fired by love of having more numerous offspring. And we find that Zilpah, her maidservant, means “a mouth going.” Therefore, when we notice in the Scriptures those whose mouth goes into the preaching of the gospel faith but whose heart does not go, this is understood to be Leah's maidservant. For it is written of some: “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” And to such the apostle says: “You who preach that one must not steal, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?” Yet so that through this condition too that free and labouring wife of Jacob may receive sons as heirs of the kingdom, the Lord therefore says: “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.” Hence the apostolic life, in the labour of chains, says: “Whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice”—as if glad of more numerous offspring even from the maidservant's bearing.

There is also a child of Leah's born through Rachel's kindness, when, having received the mandrake apples from Leah's son, she allowed her husband, who was due to lie with her that night, to lie with her sister. I know that some think of this kind of fruit that, taken as food by barren women, it produces fertility; and for that reason they think Rachel pressed in every way to get it from her sister's son out of desire to bear. I would not think so even if she had conceived then. But as it is, since the Lord gave her offspring only after two more births of Leah's following that night, there is no reason why we should suspect anything of the kind about the mandrake, which we have found in no woman. I will say, then, what I think; more learned men may perhaps say better. When I had seen these apples myself and was glad that this had happened to me because of that very passage of the sacred reading—for it is a rare thing—I examined their nature carefully, as far as I could, not with some knowledge remote from common sense, which teaches the virtues of roots and the powers of herbs, but as far as sight and smell and taste reported to me and to any man. Accordingly, I found it a beautiful and sweet-smelling thing, but insipid in taste; and so I confess I do not know why the woman desired it so much, unless perhaps for the rarity of the fruit and the pleasantness of its smell. But why holy Scripture did not wish to pass over the event itself—which would certainly not take care to suggest to us such desires of women as something great, unless it were prompting us to seek something great in them—I can conjecture nothing more than what that common sense suggests to me, namely that I understand the mandrake apple to figure good reputation: not that which is conferred when a few righteous and wise men praise a man, but that popular fame by which a greater and more widespread renown is won; not to be sought for its own sake, but very necessary for the aim of good men, by which they serve the human race. Hence the apostle says: “He must also have a good testimony from those outside”; who, though they have little wisdom, yet often render to the labour of those through whom they are served both the splendour of praise and the fragrance of a good name. And none of those in the church first reach this popular glory except those who are engaged in the dangers and labour of action. Therefore Leah's son found the mandrake apples going out into the field, that is, walking honourably towards those outside; while that teaching of wisdom, which, far removed from the din of the crowd, is fixed in sweet delight on the contemplation of truth, would not attain this popular glory, however small, except through those who, in the midst of crowds, by acting and persuading, preside over peoples, not in order to preside but in order to profit; because, while these active and busy men, through whom the welfare of the multitude is administered and whose authority is dear to the peoples, bear testimony also to the life of leisure given to the pursuit of seeking and contemplating truth, in a way the mandrake apples come through Leah to Rachel; and to Leah herself through her firstborn son, that is, through the honour of her fruitfulness, in which is all the fruit of laborious action, imperilled amid the uncertainties of temptations—action which many endowed with good ability and burning with zeal, though they could be fit to govern peoples, nevertheless avoid because of its turbulent occupations, and are carried with their whole heart into the leisure of learning, as into the embrace of beautiful Rachel.

But since it is good that this life too, becoming more widely known, should win popular glory, while it is unjust that it should gain it if it keeps its lover in leisure when he is apt and fit for administering the cares of the church, and does not give him to the government of the common welfare, therefore Leah says to her sister: “Is it too little for you that you have taken my husband, that you wish to take my son's mandrakes as well?” By the one husband she signifies all those who, though capable in the virtue of action and worthy to be entrusted with the government of the church for dispensing the sacrament of faith, are fired with zeal for learning and for searching out and contemplating wisdom, and wish to withdraw from all the troubles of action and hide themselves in the leisure of learning and teaching. So it was said: “Is it too little for you that you have taken my husband, that you wish to take my son's mandrakes as well?”—as though it were said: is it too little that the life of study keeps in leisure men necessary for the labour of public affairs, that it seeks popular glory as well?

Therefore, to obtain it justly, Rachel gives her husband to her sister that night: that is, those who by laborious virtue are suited to governing peoples, even if they had chosen to devote themselves to knowledge, should take up the experience of temptations and the burden of cares for the common good, so that the very teaching of wisdom, to which they had resolved to devote themselves, may not be blasphemed, and may gain a good reputation among the less learned peoples, which those apples signify, and which is necessary for the encouragement of learners. But that they take up this care plainly under compulsion is also sufficiently signified, in that when Jacob came from the field, Leah met him, and, holding him back, said: “You shall come in to me, for I have hired you for my son's mandrakes”; as though she said: do you wish a good reputation to be conferred on the teaching you love? Do not flee the dutiful labour. Whoever pays attention sees these things done in the church. We experience in examples what we understand in books. Who does not see this happening throughout the world: that all come from the works of the world and go into the leisure of knowing and contemplating truth, as into the embrace of Rachel, and are intercepted by the necessity of the church and ordained to labour, as though Leah said: “You shall come in to me”? And when they dispense the mystery of God chastely, so as to beget sons of faith in the night of this world, that life too is praised by the peoples, out of love for which they turned and left the hope of the world, and from whose profession they were taken up to the mercy of governing the people. For in all their labours they act so that that profession, to which they had turned, may be glorified more widely and brightly because it has given such rulers to the peoples—as though Jacob did not refuse Leah's night, so that Rachel might obtain the sweet-smelling and brightly shining apples. And she too at length, by the mercy of God, bears through herself, though only with difficulty, since it is very rare that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and whatever is said of this godly and wisely, is grasped without the phantasm of fleshly thought, and soundly, even in part.

Let these things suffice, said against Faustus's slanders, concerning the three fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose God the God whom the Catholic Church worships willed to be called. Of the merits and piety of these three men, and of the loftiness of their prophecy, far removed from the judgment of the fleshly, this is not the place to speak: in this present work of ours they needed only to be defended from these accusations with which a slanderous tongue, hostile to the truth, assailed them, lest those who read the holy and wholesome Scriptures with a perverse and hostile mind should seem to have said something against them, while they attack with insolent abuse those who are proclaimed there with such honour.

But Lot, the brother, that is, the blood-relation, of Abraham, is by no means to be compared with these, of whom God says: “I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” nor to be counted among those to whom that Scripture bears witness of righteousness to the end—although, having lived godly and chastely among the Sodomites, and commended also by the merit of hospitality, he was rescued from the burning of that land, and a land of possession was given to his descendants by the gift of God for the sake of Abraham, who was his uncle. These merits are set before us in those books to be praised, not his drunkenness, not the incest; but when we find written both a right action and a sin of the same man, one is suggested for imitation, the other for avoidance. Further, if the sin of Lot, to whom a testimony of righteousness was borne before he sinned, not only does not discolour the divinity of God or the truth of that Scripture, but even commends it as worthy of praise and love—because, like the brightness of a faithful mirror, it shows of the persons brought before it not only what is beautiful and sound but also what is ugly and faulty—how much more does the deed of Judah, in lying with his daughter-in-law, bring nothing at all for which the holy authority should be blamed! That authority, established in those books and standing firm, by divine right despises not only the slanderous subtleties of the very few Manichaeans but also the dreadful enmities of so many and such great peoples of the Gentiles, whom it has now almost wholly brought under the yoke of the worship of the one true God, away from the wicked superstition of idols, through the Christian empire, the world having been subdued not by the violence of warfare but by the power of unconquered truth. For where in those writings is Judah praised? What good has that Scripture testified of him, except that, in the prophecy of Christ, who was foretold to come in the flesh from his tribe, he stood out, commended above the others by his father's blessing?

Moreover, to Faustus's mention that he committed fornication we add something else, that he sold his brother Joseph into Egypt. Do anyone's crooked limbs corrupt the light which shows all things? So neither do anyone's misdeeds make evil the Scripture through whose disclosure they become known to readers. For when that eternal law is consulted, which commands that the natural order be preserved and forbids that it be disturbed, it ordains that human intercourse take place only for the sake of propagation, and only in a marriage socially ordered, which does not pervert the bond of peace; and therefore the prostitution of women set out not for raising offspring but for satisfying lust is condemned by the divine and eternal law. For saleable foulness dishonours every buyer; and so, although Judah would have sinned more gravely if he had wished to lie with his daughter-in-law knowingly—for if husband and wife, as the Lord says, are “no longer two but one flesh,” a daughter-in-law is to be counted no otherwise than a daughter—yet there is no doubt that, as far as was in him, he lay shamefully with a harlot. But she who deceived her father-in-law did not sin from desire for his flesh, nor from greed for a harlot's hire; but, seeking offspring from the very blood from which, though married to two brothers already, she could not have it, the third being refused her, she submitted her body by a trick to their father, her father-in-law, to be made fruitful, having received a pledge of the hire, which she kept not for adornment but for evidence. She would indeed have done better to remain without sons than to become a mother without the right of marriage; yet she sinned with a far different intention in providing her father-in-law as father for her sons than if she had desired him for herself as an adulterer. Finally, when by his order she was being led out to death and had brought out the staff, the necklace, and the ring, saying that she had been made pregnant by him whose pledges these were, when he recognized what he had given, he answered that she was more justified than he, because he had been unwilling to join his son to her as husband; deprived by which, she was compelled to seek posterity in that way rather than in no way, and from no other source than the same stock. In this sentence, saying not that she was justified but that she was more justified than he, he did not praise her, but preferred her in comparison with himself—that is, blaming less the desire to have offspring, led by which she had submitted herself to her father-in-law, than the heat of lustful intercourse, by which he, overcome, had gone in as to a harlot; just as it is said to some: “You have justified Sodom,” that is, you have sinned so much that Sodom compared with you seems righteous. And yet even if this woman is understood not as blamed less in comparison with a worse deed, but as plainly praised by her father-in-law—though, when that eternal law of justice is consulted, which forbids the natural order to be disturbed (not only, certainly, of bodies, but most of all and first of souls), she is rightly found blameworthy, because she did not keep the ordered fellowship in procreating children—what wonder if a sinful woman is praised by a sinful man?

Faustus, or rather the Manichaean perversity itself, thinks this tells against us, as though, in venerating that Scripture and praising it worthily, we had to approve the vices of men which it records; on the contrary, the more reverently we receive it, the more confidently must we blame what we have learned, through its truth, more surely to be blamed. For there fornication and every unlawful intercourse is condemned by divine law. And so, when it records such deeds of certain people, about which it keeps its own verdict silent in that place, it leaves them for us to judge; it does not prescribe them for praise. For which of us does not detest, in the gospel itself, the cruelty of Herod, when, troubled about the birth of Christ, he ordered so many infants to be killed? Yet this deed is not condemned there, only narrated. But lest the Manichaeans, with insane impudence, contend that this is false, because they deny even the birth of Christ by which Herod was troubled, let them read of the savagery and blindness of the Jews themselves, how there it is only narrated, not condemned, and yet it is detested by all.

“But,” they say, “this Judah, who lay with his daughter-in-law, is counted among the twelve patriarchs.” What of it? Was not that Judas too, who betrayed the Lord, numbered among the twelve apostles, and sent out with them, one of them, a devil, to preach the gospel? But they answer further and say: that man, after such a crime, perished by his own noose and was removed from the number of the apostles; whereas this one, after this disgrace, was especially blessed among his brothers by that father to whom God bears so great a testimony, and praised above all. On the contrary, from this it appears more expressly that that prophecy refers not to him but to Christ, who was foretold to come in the flesh from his tribe; and for that reason divine Scripture all the more ought not to keep silent about his crime, as it did not keep silent, so that in the words of his father, by which he is so praised after that disgrace, since he himself is not recognized, another may be sought.

Although Faustus may be understood to have wished, with his slandering tooth, to bite at this very thing, that we proclaim Christ to have come from his tribe, especially since in the generations of his fathers recorded by the evangelist Matthew there is found also Zerah, whom Tamar herself bore from that conception. For if he had wished to find fault with the stock of Jacob and not the generation of Christ, he had rather the firstborn Reuben, who violated his father's bed with wicked lust—a fornication such as the apostle says is not heard of even among the Gentiles. This deed his father Jacob himself did not pass over in silence when he blessed them, accusing and detesting it upon his head. Faustus would rather have objected this crime, where no mistake arising from a harlot's dress appears, but a wholly voluntary defiling of the father's bed—unless he hated Tamar herself the more because by that intercourse she desired nothing else than to bear children than if she had burned with the mere lust of fleshly pleasure, and wished, by blaming the forebears of Christ, to undermine faith in his incarnation; not knowing, wretched man, that the most true and truthful Saviour was a teacher not only by speaking but also by being born. For his faithful, who were to come from all nations, had to learn even from the example of his own flesh that the iniquities of their parents could not harm them. Accordingly, that bridegroom, suiting himself to his invited guests, who was going to call good and bad to the wedding, willed also to be born of good and bad, so as to confirm that the prophecy of the Passover, in which the lamb was commanded to be eaten taken from the sheep and the goats, as from the righteous and the unrighteous, had gone before to prefigure him. For, keeping everywhere the proofs of God and of man, he did not scorn parents both good and bad, for the sake of fitness to his humanity, but chose birth from a virgin for the sake of the miracle of his divinity.

In vain, then, does Faustus, raging rather against himself with sacrilegious tooth, accuse the holy Scripture, which the whole world now rightly reveres: which, as I said above, like the brightness of a faithful mirror, has flattered no one's person, but either itself judges men's deeds to be praised and blamed, or sets them before readers to be judged; not only indicating that the men themselves are blameworthy or praiseworthy, but also not keeping silent about some things to be praised in the blameworthy and some to be blamed in the praiseworthy. For not because Saul was a blameworthy man is that deed of his therefore not praiseworthy, in that he so diligently searched out the tasting of what was under the curse and tried so severely to punish it, obeying God, who had forbidden it to be done; or that he removed the pythonesses and ventriloquists from his kingdom. Nor, because David was praiseworthy, are his sins, which God also rebuked through the prophet, therefore to be either approved or imitated. Just as neither is Pontius Pilate to be blamed in that, against the accusations of the Jews, he judged the Lord innocent, nor is Peter to be praised in that he denied the same Lord three times, or in that for which he was called Satan by him, because, not minding the things of God, he wished to call him back from his passion, that is, from our salvation; so he who was called blessed a little before was called Satan a little after. But what prevailed in him, his apostleship and the crown of martyrdom testify.

So too we read the sins of King David, but we read also his right actions. And in what he prevailed, or by what he conquered what, is plain enough—not to the malevolent blindness with which Faustus rushed against the holy books and men, but to the religious prudence by which both the divine authority and human merits can be seen and distinguished. For let these men read and see that God rebuked more things in David than Faustus did; but there too is the sacrifice of repentance, there is that incomparable gentleness even towards a most savage and cruel enemy, who, as often as he was given into David's most mighty hands, so often was let go unharmed from his most godly hands. There is memorable humility under the scourge of God, and the royal neck so subject to the Lord's yoke that, armed and accompanied by armed men, he bore most patiently bitter insults from an enemy's mouth, and most modestly restrained his companion, inflamed with anger because his king heard such things and already about to proceed with avenging right hand against the reviler's head; adding to his royal command the weight of divine fear, and saying that this was rendered to his deserts by the judgment from above, by which that insulter had been sent to hurl such reproaches at him. There is such pastoral love towards the flock entrusted to him that he wished to die himself for them, when, after the people had been numbered, it pleased God to punish the sin of his pride by reducing that same number by the death of many, by whose multitude the king's heart had been tempted to pride; in which hidden judgment God, with whom there is no iniquity, both withdrew from this life those whom he knew unworthy of this life, and in him who had exalted himself because of the abundance of men healed the swelling of the human mind by diminishing that same abundance. There such religious fear of God guarded the sacrament of Christ in the holy anointing that his heart trembled with godly anxiety when he secretly cut off a small piece of Saul's own garment, so as to have something by which to prove to him how unwilling he was to kill him when he could. There is such prudence and such clemency towards his sons that, though he did not mourn the innocent child, for whom, when sick, he had besought the Lord with many tears, casting himself down in the squalor of humility, once he was dead, yet the young son rushing headlong in parricidal fury, who had both stained his father's bed with wicked defilements and was waging a criminal war against his father, he both wished to be preserved and wept for when killed—foreseeing, namely, the everlasting punishments of a soul entangled in such great crimes, to escape which he desired him to live, humbled, so as to be corrected through repentance. These and many other things to be praised and imitated are found in that holy man, if a perverse mind does not search the Scripture that speaks of him; above all if, with a submissive, godly, and plainly faithful mind, we follow the verdict of God, who knew the secrets of his heart, where in the sight of him who cannot be deceived he was so pleasing that he was even set forth by him for his sons to imitate.