On the Catholic Way of Life and On the Manichaean Way of Life 1.1–1.11

In other books, I think, we have done enough to show how we can meet the attacks of the Manichaeans, which they launch ignorantly and impiously against the Law, that is, the so-called Old Testament, while they parade themselves with empty boasting amid the applause of the ignorant; and I can briefly recall it here too. For who of even moderately sound mind would not readily understand that the explanation of the Scriptures must be sought from those who profess to be their teachers; and that it can happen, indeed always does happen, that many things seem absurd to the untaught which, when explained by the more learned, seem all the more praiseworthy, and are received with all the more delight once opened, the harder they were to open while closed? This is generally what happens with the holy books of the Old Testament, provided that one who takes offense at them seeks a devout teacher of them rather than an impious mangler, and is filled with the eagerness of one who inquires before the rashness of one who finds fault. Nor, if in his desire to learn these things he happens to meet some bishops or presbyters, or prelates and ministers of the catholic Church of any kind, who either take care not to lay bare the mysteries indiscriminately, or, content with simple faith, have not troubled to learn deeper things, should he despair of finding the knowledge of the truth there, where neither can all who are asked teach, nor are all who ask worthy to learn. So both diligence and devotion must be applied: by the one we shall find people who know; by the other we shall deserve to know.

But the Manichaeans have two chief lures by which the unwary are deceived into wanting them as teachers: one, when they find fault with the Scriptures, which they either misunderstand or want to be misunderstood; the other, when they display the appearance of a chaste life and remarkable self-control. This book, therefore, will contain our view of life and morals, in keeping with catholic teaching; and in it, perhaps, it will be understood how easy it is to feign virtue and how hard to have it. I will certainly keep this measure, if I can: not to attack their diseases, which are very well known to me, as fiercely as they attack what they do not know; for I want them healed, if it can be done, rather than fought. And I will take from the Scriptures testimonies which they must believe, namely from the New Testament; yet from it I will bring forward nothing of what they are accustomed to say was interpolated when they are hard pressed, but I will cite what they are compelled both to approve and to praise. Nor will I leave any statement of the apostolic teaching that I bring forward as a witness without setting beside it a similar one from the Old Testament; so that, if they can at last wake up, lay aside the obstinacy of their dreams, and aspire to the light of Christian faith, they may notice both how far from Christian is the life they parade, and how truly the Scripture they mangle is Christ's.

Where then shall I begin? With authority, or with reason? The order of nature is such that when we learn anything, authority comes before reason. For a reason may seem weak which, after it has been given, takes on authority afterwards to confirm it. But because the minds of men, darkened by long familiarity with the shadows in which they are veiled in the night of sins and vices, cannot fix a fitting gaze on the clearness and purity of reason, it has been arranged most wholesomely that authority, shaded as it were by the boughs of humanity, should lead the faltering eye into the light of truth. But since we are dealing with people who think, speak, and act against order in everything, and who say nothing more insistently than that reason must be given first, I will humor them and take up a method which I admit is faulty in argument. For I delight in imitating, as far as I can, the gentleness of my Lord Jesus Christ, who clothed himself even with the evil of death itself, of which he wished to strip us.

Let us then inquire by reason how a human being ought to live. We certainly all want to live happily; and there is no one in the human race who does not assent to this statement even before it is fully uttered. But in my judgment no one can be called happy who does not have what he loves, whatever it may be; nor one who has what he loves if it is harmful; nor one who does not love what he has, even if it is the best. For one who desires what he cannot obtain is tormented; one who has obtained what ought not to be desired is deceived; and one who does not desire what ought to be obtained is sick. None of these things happens to the mind without misery; and misery and happiness do not usually dwell together in one person: so none of these is happy. A fourth case remains, as I see it, where the happy life can be found: when that which is best for a human being is both loved and possessed. For what else is it that we call enjoying, but having at hand what you love? And no one is happy who does not enjoy what is best for a human being; nor is anyone who enjoys it not happy. Our best, then, must be at hand for us if we intend to live happily.

It follows that we should ask what is best for a human being; and that certainly cannot be inferior to the human being himself. For whoever follows what is inferior to himself becomes inferior himself. But every human being ought to follow what is best. Therefore what is best for a human being is not inferior to a human being. Will it perhaps be something such as the human being himself is? Let it be so indeed, if there is nothing better than a human being which he can enjoy. But if we find something that is both more excellent than a human being and can be at hand for the person who loves it, who would doubt that, to be happy, a human being must strive toward that which is plainly superior to the very one who strives? For if being happy is having attained a good beyond which there is nothing greater, which is what we call the best, how can anyone who has not yet attained his highest good be included in that definition? Or how is it highest, if there is something better that we can attain? If this is so, then, it must be such that one does not lose it against one's will. For no one can be confident about a good which he senses can be snatched from him, even if he wishes to keep and embrace it. And whoever is not confident about the good he enjoys, how can he be happy in such fear of losing it?

Let us ask, then, what is better than a human being. This is certainly hard to find unless we first consider and examine what a human being himself is. I do not think I must now be asked for a definition of man. What seems to me rather to need asking here, since almost everyone agrees, or at least, which is enough, it is agreed between me and those with whom I am now dealing, that we are composed of soul and body, is this: what is the human being himself? Is he both of the things I have named, or only the body, or only the soul? For although there are two things, soul and body, and neither would be called a human being if the other did not exist (for the body would not be a human being if there were no soul, nor again would the soul be a human being if a body were not animated by it), yet it may be that one of them is both regarded as and called a human being. What then do we call a human being? Soul and body, like a pair of horses or a centaur? Or the body only, as being at the service of the soul that rules it, as we call a lamp not the flame and the vessel together but the vessel alone, though on account of the flame? Or do we call nothing else a human being than the soul, but on account of the body it rules, as we call a horseman not the horse and the man together but the man alone, yet because he is fitted to ruling the horse? It is hard to settle this controversy; or, if it is easy by reason, it is long to explain in words; and there is no need to undertake and endure that labor and delay. For whether both, or the soul alone, bears the name of man, what is best for the body is not what is best for the human being; but what is best either for body and soul together or for the soul alone, that is the best for the human being.

If we ask what is best for the body, sound reason compels us to admit that it is that through which the body is in the best condition. But of all the things that give vigor to the body, nothing is better or more excellent than the soul. So the highest good of the body is not its pleasure, not freedom from pain, not strength, not beauty, not swiftness, nor anything else usually counted among the goods of the body, but simply the soul. For by its presence the soul supplies the body with all the things just mentioned, and with what surpasses them all, life. Hence the soul does not seem to me to be the highest good of a human being, whether we call the human being soul and body together or the soul alone. For just as reason found the highest good of the body to be what is better than the body and supplies it with vigor and life, so, whether a human being is body and soul or the soul by itself, we must find whether there is anything that is above the soul itself which, when the soul follows it, makes the soul as good as it can be in its kind. If we can find it, that will certainly be what, setting aside all evasions, is rightly and deservedly to be called the highest good of a human being. Or if the human being is the body, I cannot deny that the best for a human being is the soul itself. But certainly when we are dealing with morals, when we ask what manner of life must be held to so that we can obtain happiness, it is not to the body that precepts are given, and it is not the body's training that must be investigated. In short, good conduct will be the work of that part of us which inquires and learns; and these belong to the soul: so when we strive to obtain virtue, the question is not about the body. And if it follows, as it does, that the body itself, when it is ruled by a soul possessed of virtue, is ruled much better and more honorably, and is in the best condition when the soul that rules itself by a just law is at its best, then what makes the soul best will be the best for the human being, even if we call the body the human being. If my charioteer, obeying me, feeds and manages most suitably the horses in his charge, and himself enjoys my generosity the more obedient he is to me, can anyone deny that not only the charioteer's good condition but also the horses' is owed to me? So whether the human being is only body, or only soul, or both, the chief thing to be sought, it seems to me, is what makes the soul best: for once that is grasped, a human being cannot fail to be either in the best condition, or at least in a much better condition than if this one thing were lacking.

No one will doubt that virtue makes the soul best. But it may very properly be asked whether this virtue can exist even by itself, or only in a soul. Here again arises a very deep question needing a very long discussion; but perhaps I can make good use of a shortcut, and I hope God will be with us, so that, as far as our weakness allows, we may teach about such great matters not only clearly but also briefly. For whichever it is, whether virtue can exist by itself without a soul or can exist only in a soul, beyond doubt the soul follows something in order to attain virtue; this will be either the soul itself, or virtue, or some third thing. But if the soul follows itself in order to acquire virtue, it follows something foolish; for it is foolish before it has acquired virtue. Now the highest wish of those who follow is to reach what each follows. So either the soul will wish not to reach what it follows, than which nothing more absurd or perverse can be said; or, when in its folly it follows itself, it reaches the very folly it shuns. But if it follows virtue, desiring to reach it, how does it follow what does not exist? Or how does it desire to reach what it has? So either virtue exists apart from the soul; or, if one prefers not to call anything virtue except the habit itself and, as it were, the quality of the wise soul, which can exist only in a soul, the soul must follow something else so that virtue may be born in it; for neither by following nothing nor by following folly can it, as far as my reason shows, attain wisdom. This other thing, then, by following which the soul becomes possessed of virtue and wisdom, is either a wise man or God. But it was said above that it must be something we cannot lose against our will. Who would hesitate to think that a wise man, if we were content to follow him, can be taken from us not only when we are unwilling but even when we resist? It remains, then, that it is God: if we follow him, we live well; if we reach him, we live not only well but happily. As for those who deny that he exists, why should I consider with what argument they are to be persuaded, when I do not know whether one should talk with them at all? Even if it seems right, however, a quite different beginning, method, and approach must be taken from the one we have undertaken now. Now my business is with those who do not deny that God exists, and who moreover admit that human affairs are not neglected by him. For I think no one holds to any form of religion who does not believe at least that our souls are cared for by divine providence.

But how do we follow one whom we do not see? Or how do we see, we who are not only human beings but foolish human beings? For although he is perceived not with the eyes but with the mind, what mind can be found fit, while it is covered by the cloud of folly, to drink in that light, or even to try? We must take refuge, then, in the precepts of those who were probably wise. This far reason could be brought. For it moved among human things, not more certain of the truth, but more secure through familiarity. But when it came to divine things, it turned away: it cannot gaze, it trembles, it is in turmoil, it gapes with love, it is beaten back by the light of truth, and turns back to the familiarity of its own darkness, not by choice but by exhaustion. How much is it to be feared here, how much dreaded, that the soul may contract greater weakness there where, worn out, it seeks rest! So, when we long to flee back into the darkness, let that shade of authority meet us, through the dispensation of the ineffable Wisdom, and let it soothe us with wonderful deeds and the words of books, as with gentler signs and shadows of the truth. What more could have been done for our salvation? What more beneficent, what more generous, can be said of divine providence, which did not wholly abandon man when he fell from its laws and, through desire for mortal things, justly and deservedly propagated a mortal offspring? For that most just power has, in wonderful and incomprehensible ways, through certain most secret successions of the things it created and which serve it, both the severity to punish and the mercy to set free. How beautiful this is, how great, how worthy of God, and finally how true, which is what we are seeking, we shall never be able to understand unless, beginning from human and near things, keeping the faith and precepts of the true religion, we do not abandon the way which God has fortified for us by the setting apart of the patriarchs, the bond of the Law, the foretelling of the prophets, the mystery of the Man assumed, the testimony of the apostles, the blood of the martyrs, and the winning of the nations. Therefore from now on let no one ask me for my own opinion, but let us rather listen to the oracles, and submit our petty reasonings to the divine utterances.

Let us see how the Lord himself in the Gospel has taught us to live, and how the apostle Paul has too; for they do not dare to condemn these Scriptures. Let us hear, then, O Christ, what end of goods you prescribe for us; and there is no doubt that the end will be that toward which you bid us strive with the highest love. “You shall love,” he says, “the Lord your God.” Tell me also, I beg you, what is the measure of loving; for I fear to be inflamed with desire and love for my Lord more or less than I ought. “With all your heart,” he says. That is not enough. “With all your soul.” Not even that is enough. “With all your mind.” What more do you want? I might perhaps want more, if I saw what more there could be. What does Paul say to this? “We know,” he says, “that for those who love God all things work together for good.” Let him also state the measure of love. “Who then,” he says, “shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or danger? Or the sword?” We have heard what we ought to love and how much we ought to love it: toward this we must strive with all our might, and to this all our plans must be referred. The end of goods for us is God. God is for us the highest good. We must neither stay below it nor seek beyond it: the one is dangerous, the other is nothing.

Come now, let us investigate, or rather let us notice, for it is at hand and very easily seen, whether the authority of the Old Testament also agrees with these statements brought from the Gospel and the Apostle. What shall I say of the first statement, when it is plain to all that it was drawn from the law given through Moses? For there it is written, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And as for what the Apostle said, so that I need not search longer for something from the Old Testament to compare with it, he added it himself. For when he had said that no tribulation, no distress, no persecution, no want of bodily needs, no danger, no sword separates us from the love of Christ, he at once went on: “As it is written, ‘For your sake we are afflicted all the day long; we are reckoned as sheep for the slaughter.’” They are accustomed to say that this was inserted by corrupters of the Scriptures; so completely have they nothing to say against it that we are forced, poor men, to answer such things. But who does not understand that men who have been refuted could have no other last word? I ask them, however, whether they deny that this statement is in the Old Testament, or affirm that it does not agree with the apostle's statement. The first I will show from the books; in the second, as they twist about and flee over precipices, I will either call them back to peace, if they are willing to look back a little and consider what was said, or I will pursue them with the understanding of others who judge without partisanship. For what can be more harmonious than the agreement of these statements? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, all grievously afflict a person set in this life. All these words, then, are summed up in that one testimony of the old Law, in which it is said, “For your sake we are afflicted.” The sword remained, which does not bring a life of hardship but takes away the life it finds. To this, then, corresponds, “We are reckoned as sheep for the slaughter.” And love itself could not be signified more expressly than by the words, “For your sake.” Suppose, then, that this testimony had not been found in the apostle Paul but brought forward by me. What would you have to show, heretic, except either that it is not written in the old Law or that it does not suit the Apostle? And if you dare say neither (for you are pressed, since the book is read in which it is plain that it is written, and people understand that nothing could suit what the Apostle said better), why then do you think there is any force in your daring to accuse the Scriptures of being corrupted? Finally, what will you answer someone who says to you: “This is how I understand it, this is how I take it, this is what I believe; and I read those books for no other reason than that I see everything in them in harmony with the Christian faith”? Say rather, if you dare and intend to speak against me, that one must not believe what is said of the apostles and martyrs, that they suffered grievous hardships for Christ's sake, that they were reckoned by their persecutors as sheep for the slaughter. If you cannot say this, why do you quibble about the book in which I find what you admit I ought to believe?

Or do you say that you grant indeed that God is to be loved, but not that God whom those worship who accept the authority of the Old Testament? Then you say that the God who made heaven and earth is not to be worshiped. For he is proclaimed throughout every part of those volumes; and you admit that this whole world, which is signified by the name of heaven and earth, has God as its author and maker, and a good God. For we must speak with you with a qualification whenever God is named, since you hold that there are two gods, one good and the other evil. But if you say that you worship and think worthy of worship the God by whom the world was made, but that he is not the one whom the authority of the Old Testament commends, you act shamelessly, trying in vain to misinterpret another's mind and meaning, which we have received rightly and profitably. For your foolish and impious disputations can in no way be compared with the discourses of devout and most learned men, through whom in the catholic Church those Scriptures are opened to those who are willing and worthy. The Law and the Prophets are understood by us quite otherwise than you think. Stop erring: we do not worship a God who repents, nor an envious one, nor a needy one, nor a cruel one, nor one who seeks pleasure from the blood of men or cattle, nor one who is pleased by shameful deeds and crimes, nor one who limits his possession to some little patch of earth. For against these and similar trifles you are accustomed to declaim weightily and at length. So your invective does not touch us; but you tear at certain old wives' or even children's opinions, with speech that is the more inept the more vehement it is. Whoever is moved by it and goes over to you does not condemn the teaching of our Church but shows that he does not know it.

Therefore, if you have anything humane in your hearts, if you care at all for yourselves, inquire rather diligently and devoutly how these things are said. Inquire, wretched men: for a faith by which anything unfitting to God is believed we condemn more vehemently and more fully than you; and in those things which have been said, when they are understood as the letter sounds, we both correct simplicity and laugh at obstinacy. And many other things which you cannot understand the catholic teaching forbids those to believe who, going beyond a certain childhood of mind, not in years but in study and understanding, are advanced to the white hairs of wisdom. For it teaches how foolish it is to believe that God is contained in some place, however infinite, by any extents of quantity; and it holds it wicked to think that he himself or any part of him moves and passes from place to place. And if anyone should think that anything of his substance and nature can suffer change or alteration in any way, he will be condemned for extraordinary madness and impiety. So it happens that among us there are found some children who think of God in human form and suppose he is so, than which opinion nothing is lower; but there are also found many old men who see with the mind itself that his majesty abides inviolable and unchangeable, not only above the human body but even above the mind itself. These ages, as has already been said, are to be distinguished not by time but by virtue and prudence. Among you, on the other hand, no one indeed is found who describes the substance of God by the shape of a human body; but again, no one who separates it from the stain of human error. So those whom, as it were still crying infants, the breasts of the catholic Church sustain, if they are not carried off by heretics, are nourished each according to his capacity and strength, and are led on, one in this way and another in that, first to the perfect man, and then they come to the maturity and white hairs of wisdom, so that they may live as they wish, and live most happily.

Following God, then, is the desire for happiness; reaching him is happiness itself. We follow him by loving; and we reach him not when we become entirely what he is, but when we come near him and touch him in a wonderful and intelligible way, and are thoroughly lit up and embraced by his truth and holiness. For he is light itself; and it is granted to us to be lit up by him. The greatest thing, then, that leads to the happy life, and the first commandment, is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.” For “for those who love God all things work together for good.” Hence the same Paul says a little later: “I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor power, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If, then, for those who love God all things work together for good, and no one doubts that the highest good, which is also called the best, is not only to be loved but to be loved so that we ought to love nothing more, and this is what is signified and expressed by the words, “with all your soul, and with all your heart, and with all your mind,” who, I ask, would doubt, once all this is established and most firmly believed, that nothing else is best for us, to obtain which we must hasten, putting all else after it, but God? Again, if nothing separates us from his love, what can be not only better but also more certain than this good?

But let us look briefly at each item. No one separates us from it by threatening death. For that by which we love God cannot die except while it does not love God, since death itself is not to love God, which is nothing other than to prefer anything to him in loving and following. No one separates us from it by promising life: for no one separates us from the spring itself by promising water. An angel does not separate us: for no angel is more powerful than our mind when we cleave to God. Power does not separate us: for if the power named here is one that has some authority in this world, the mind that cleaves to God is far higher than the whole world. But if the power meant is the most right disposition of our own mind, then if it is in another, it helps us to be joined to God; if it is in us, it joins us itself. Present troubles do not separate us: for we feel them the lighter, the more closely we cleave to him from whom they strive to separate us. The promise of things to come does not separate us: for God promises more surely whatever good is to come, and nothing is better than God himself, who is surely present already to those who cleave to him rightly. Height and depth do not separate us: for if these words perhaps mean the height or depth of knowledge, I will not be curious, lest I be cut off from God; nor does anyone's teaching separate me from him by dispelling error, as it were, since no one would err at all unless he were separated from him. But if the heights and depths of this world are meant, who could promise me heaven so that I would be cut off from the maker of heaven? Or what hell could terrify me into deserting God, when, had I never deserted him, I would know nothing of hell? Finally, what place will tear me from his love, when he would not be wholly everywhere if he were contained in any place?