Against the Manichees

Those who have made it their earnest concern to remove from God the causes of the sins committed among men have had in this a holy and true aim, provided that, without evading the truth that God provides for our affairs, they have reasonably and truthfully ascribed to men their own sins; for otherwise, in wishing to heal a small ailment, they fell into a greater and grievous disease of impiety, falling into a denial of God’s providence, which appears in everything. But Mani, who came from among the barbarians and is named after madness itself, used a drug still more harmful, toward impiety. For wishing to show God not responsible for evil, he set up against him an evil of equal rank: unbegotten (as he says) against unbegotten, living against living, always rising up and fighting and never ceasing to give him trouble, yet unable to be wholly destroyed by him, as being eternal, complete in its substance, and unbegotten. And fleeing the smoke (as the saying goes), he has fallen into the fire. For so that God may not seem to bear the responsibility for the evils among us, as he thinks, God himself has his full share of a whole and complete evil beside him. What then? Even if he handles it patiently and wisely (as he says), still on such a hypothesis he would not be free of war. And what could be more foreign to the reasoning that befits God? That it is pious to confess with all one’s strength that God is not responsible for the wrongs done among men, the teaching of the catholic church has been the first to champion. But when it is asked in what way we sin, though God does not will it, we do not accuse God of greater things while wishing to defend him in lesser ones, as that man does. Rather, holding the very road of truth from the holy Scriptures and from the common notions, we travel safely toward that inquiry, and we make the demonstration on God’s behalf a pious one by truthfully accusing ourselves. For it is not fitting, in order to escape by argument the charges for the wrongs we commit against one another, to be impious toward God, fabricating against him the most insulting things of all, things that do not exist at all. Moreover, since we consider the sins among men curable (for they do not flow upon us as from some principle, but are done by us in another way, which the discourse will explain clearly in due time), not only are we not impious toward God, since we do not dare to conjecture in him a grievous inability to withstand an evil that does not exist, but we also try to stop what we do in the manner of evil, by showing clearly to those who pay attention that what truly has its beginning of coming to be through us could also receive through us an end of no longer coming to be, even if not among all. For the whole is not in each person’s power, but it is in each of those who are earnest; yet what is possible in each case is a sample of what is possible for the whole.

But he who devised a barbarian impiety, fabricating a beginningless evil against the God who alone is truly without beginning, and madly defining it as a second principle, not only places evil in equal rank with God, as though honouring it, he who supposedly chose to hate it, but also, by saying that the evils flowing from the beginningless one are of necessity wholly incurable, treacherously makes those who believe him think that wrongdoing among men cannot be corrected. So, through their prior attachment to the pleasure of sins, they put forward despair instead of conversion, as though it were impossible to check the current of a beginningless evil; unless someone, out of a desire for glory (that of seeming to have the greater share from the good, as they tell their myths), should zealously succeed as far as possible in not sinning, so making plain by that very fact that it was not from elsewhere but from himself that he used to do wrong. Yet he would carry off a certain glory among them, as being better in his make-up than his nature, he who does this not by nature but by toil and sweat, and who would think himself praised while he is deprived of true praise. For abandoning the good repute that belongs to the toil of virtue (if it were achieved for the sake of piety toward God), he falsely treats the necessity of nature as a prize to be seized, turning the usefulness of industry into impiety against God. So neither is the man given to ease struck in his mind when he does evil, if he reckons what is done to the other principle, nor is the man who exerts himself worthy of admiration, though he toils by reasoning.

… so as to be led into the most grievous impiety of all against God. And his followers, not understanding the reason of God’s work of creation, not only went astray in the way described by examining the irrational actions of men, but also slandered most created things, or rather nearly all, which in truth admit no blame, and called them evil. Of some they falsely claimed that they are a mixture of opposites (as they say), of evil and good; others they denounced as evil of a single kind; and they confounded everything, as far as in them lay, by calling evil what is in no way evil. For if they had denounced as evil the injustice among men, which alone is injustice, they ought even so to have been careful about the name and about their view of it, as something that exists and does not exist according as it is done or not done, and least of all to introduce it as a principle against God; yet their error would then have been easily kept within bounds. But as it is, by calling nearly the whole creation evil, they have made their blasphemy against God enormous, and they bring forward as conceded in argument all the wild beasts and vermin, thinking that these cannot have been made by a good being, since they are not only useless (as they suppose) but also very harmful to men; and yet these can be shown to be more beneficial and useful than the things that really seem to profit men. They string together many other things too, to slander existing things and the governance of the universe; but the discourse will try to leave nothing undemonstrated of what has been said and will be said.

For imagining a mixture of two opposite natures in existing things, they distribute existing things between these as seems good to them, saying, “Whence come evils, unless these too come from some principle?” And if anyone asks, “What evils?”, they string together the sins of men and the works of God’s creation, and they decry the whole all-wise economy itself; since, if anyone should show that all things have come to be and come to be well and of necessity, their account of the opposite principle is necessarily gone. For not understanding how things below are, they made up fictions about the things above; and not grasping how the things seen are ordered, they slandered what is not seen; and in their eagerness to know, through not knowing they fell into greater ignorance. For as though seeking in darkness an understanding of the things that appear, they not only failed to find what they thought they were seeking, but made the darkness of their ignorance greater.

We, then, shall first deal with the two opposite principles they posit, and so come to the demonstration on behalf of the universe, that all things are good and necessary, and especially (as I said before) those against which they make the greatest attack as admittedly evil; and further concerning the governance of the universe, and the things for which they unfeelingly condemn its harshness, though it arranges what is more necessary; and moreover concerning the wrongs done among men, that not even because of these was it fitting to imagine a principle of evil against God. For it will be shown that these too display the goodness of him who made us, and that they are neither done by men by his will nor borne upon us from some cause or principle. So now let us come to the beginning of their mythical impiety, examining whether the natural notions admit two opposite principles of existing things at all. For if they would not admit even two principles in agreement, how much less warring ones?

That man himself, then, who was most grievously mad, begins everywhere in his writings: “There were God and matter, light and darkness, good and evil, in all things utterly opposed, so that neither shares anything with the other, and both unbegotten and living.”

Then either these will be separated from each other, or, if they are together, they will appear friendly and in no way opposed. But clearly he too says that these are apart from each other. Will each, then, be bounded in its substance by the other, and neither be unlimited? But to bound God in his substance, and not to know and confess him infinite, how is that not very impious? For he will seem not only to be bounded and circumscribed in substance, but also to suffer this from evil (as that man says); which is, first, outside the common notions, which lead us to know that he is everywhere and that his nature cannot be contained.

Further, if these necessarily stand apart from each other, God will seem, according to that man’s madness, not only to be bounded in nature but also to exist and remain in a place of his own, like his opposite. For things kept apart by each other are clearly circumscribed by places of their own. Then it must be examined. If both opposites are older than their places, as being unbegotten, there was a time, again, when they were previously both free of opposition. But if the separation is coeternal with the substance of each, the place is either older than the substance of each or co-unbegotten with it. If it is older, so that each seems to be an offshoot of its place, then these are neither unbegotten nor eternal (that will seem to belong rather to the places from which they come). If it is co-unbegotten, the unbegotten things will be more than two; for the things in which these exist, and without which they cannot exist, must necessarily be other than these.

Besides this, one must also demand a boundary between the two, which separates them and prevents each from communion with the other, lest by mixing with each other again at their borders they destroy the account of their opposition. What, then, will wall off and separate the two? For the fiction of their myth needs some third thing in substance. Will they tell us of the adamantine wall, then, or something else, in their raving? And by whose providence, when they say this, will it have been put in between? For to whichever of the opposites they choose to ascribe it, as put in between later at some time, their hypothesis will be found to lead nowhere. For the argument, going back to the earlier state, will again catch the opposites inseparable from each other, and so in no way opposed. But if they say that the boundary they speak of exists by the providence of neither, they necessarily confess that they are introducing another unbegotten thing, sharing in the substance of neither opposite, so that by differing entirely it may keep them apart; and they will be found positing a crowd of unbegotten things after saying that the unbegotten are two. And this separating boundary, whether a wall or uninhabited land or whatever they like, where does it have its base? Where its top? Clearly its base below (where, and how far?) and its top above (where, and to what height?). For “above” and “below” are names belonging to creation, used before creation. And the boundary must be deeper and higher than the substance of the things separated, lest, falling short below or above, it give the opposites passage to each other.

If they compare what they call the boundary to shadow and sun, they will think that the shadow has no communion with the sun, but they will be sharply refuted as deceived by the madman. For a shadow comes about through communion with the sun and its presence everywhere, when some bulk stands up in between and sends the shadow off to the other side. And a shadow would be nothing else than evidence of light hindered by some interposed body; since at night, when light is not present, not even a partial shadow would arise. Is it not so that where there is shadow, there is light? For what lies beyond the shadow is lit by the light, unless the thing casting the shadow far exceeds in height the thing giving light. And unless the most ridiculous wall is posited, against reason, evil will be seen dwelling in light, light within light. For how could a shadow arise, when the light is present throughout the whole, unless something standing up in between and shutting it out throughout produced it? If that is not put in between, standing up as high as can be, the light will be forever common to evil as well.

Again, by giving the southern part to evil they sketch, as in a dream, the plan of creation. For where was the south before there was a south? And no place in creation could be less honourable than another; for what is on the left of one looking west is found again on the right of one looking east. But the absurdity of this barbarian doctrine is very great. For how could there be two principles at all, or how could they be called principles? For a principle is that which is older than the whole and rules over all things, and neither of these could belong to either of them. For both, being contemporaneous and co-unbegotten, destroy the account of priority over each other. And how could these, being excluded from ruling power not only over each other (as opposites) but also fighting by nature, be thought to rule at all? If, then, the account of a principle is preserved for neither, how could they be called principles? And how would natural reasoning admit that two things exist opposite in substance? For, first, the name of substance is common to both. In that respect, then, in which each is first of all a substance, plainly they agree and are not opposite. Then both are living beings, and besides this they are equally unbegotten. And where the names are the same and the description is the same, how can the substance be at war and opposite? Yet names signify things, for they declare of each thing what it is, as far as possible. We recognize, then, that things are what the force of their names says.

So then, if each of the things the madman thinks opposites is named a living and unbegotten substance, is it not plain that, since such an error took its beginning from barbarians, the consistency of the common notions has been destroyed among them? For the description of each is entire and exactly the same: it not only banishes all suspicion of opposition, but does not even allow any difference to exist between the things so named.

Those who run with the madman say that one is good and the other evil, taking the qualities, as it were, before the substance. For since substance is named alike of each (both are living and unbegotten substance), the opposition of their so-called quality is superfluous. (For even if it is not fitting to name a quality in God, still in thought being in some way comes before being of such a kind; and being is signified by “living and unbegotten substance”.) Unless they say that the opposites came upon each as attributes, which is the most senseless thing of all; for nothing comes upon the unbegotten: to that upon which being did not come, neither does a being of such a kind come, which it was not. Opposition of qualities, then, can be found among existing things, but opposition of substance nowhere. White is opposite to black, but each is in a body, in its own substance. Yet they are opposed to each other in one respect and not in another. For, first, they fall under one genus (each is a colour); then, even if they seem opposite, they offer the eye a varied enjoyment, for neither of them pains it by disproportion. And again, virtue and vice in the soul, though these too are opposites, are said to be not only in the same substance but also in one genus (each is a state), and they are present in the soul as things that come upon it, so that they can also leave it, as the soul in which they are is disposed now one way and now another. So it is plain that the account of the substance is defined on its own, and the account of what comes upon it is another. And white and black are sometimes present inseparably in the things in which they are, and yet no one has ever named those things from them. No one wishing to signify milk has used the name of whiteness rather than the name established for the kind of substance, lest he seem to signify many things instead of one, namely all the things to which whiteness belongs. Nor do we signify a crow by “black”, but by the name of the animal and its kind. These, then, and such as these are inseparable qualities; but virtue and vice in the soul are among the qualities that come upon it, so that it is all the more fitting that the substance of man should in no way be named from them, but signified in its own right. No one, at any rate, has signified what man is from the vice present in some individual; rather, he first states the kind of substance, then adds the individual, and afterwards names the quality. Of qualities, then (as I said before), one may find opposition in lower things, some separable and some inseparable. But from God every quality is excluded, since nothing he is called is other than himself (for he is simple and uncompounded); yet in thought (as we said before) being comes before being of such a kind. Therefore, taking it up again, we say that if each of the things he says are opposite is a living and unbegotten substance (they would not deny it), then either both are good (so that, for reverent speech, the opposite they speak of may be held to be what does not exist at all, because of the one who is truly good; for we do not reverse this), or both are evil. But the unbegotten is wholly good. For example, since God is unbegotten, does he have this very not-having-been-begotten as an evil? By no means; plainly as a good. What allotment, then, makes this very thing and name fair and good in God, but its opposite, evil, in evil (as they say)? For in coming into being a difference might be found (a difference, though not an opposition); but what difference could one find in being unbegotten, much less an opposition? It is therefore wholly impossible for unbegotten to be opposite to unbegotten. For if anything were opposite, it ought neither to be nor to be called anything the same as its opposite, so as to have no communion in anything with it; for if it were not opposite in every way, in so far as it shares, it is not opposite. Opposite, however, is non-being to being; and perhaps not even this, for it does not fight. But being is not opposite to being. And if being wholly agrees with being, it is the one who alone truly is that gives being its beginning in all things.

They themselves also say that everything opposite to God must be ascribed to matter. For example, if we call God light, the opposite is darkness; if good, that is evil; and if we call God truth itself, plainly the opposite will be called falsehood. But how could what truly exists (as they suppose matter does) be falsehood? For what does not exist, if it were said to exist, would be a falsehood; but what exists, and truly exists, being true by its very existence, could not be a falsehood. For if someone says it exists, he speaks the truth; and if he does not say that it exists, so as not to speak the truth, still he could not say that it does not exist, so as to lie; and if he does say that it does not exist, he lies in his thought. So it is not itself falsehood, for it truly exists,

Then, if they call the good incorruption, they will name evil corruption. But what would corruption be the corruption of? Of the good it is impossible. And if it were the corruption of itself, in the many ages it would have corrupted itself, and they imagine in vain that it exists. And how could it be corruption? For corruption always destroys something else, not itself. If it destroyed itself, it would never have come to subsist at all; for it will be seen to be destroying itself rather than existing, since an incorruptible corruption cannot be conceived according to the common notions. And what is unbegotten and eternal is wholly incorruptible, and therefore also immortal; for to be unbegotten is above being incorruptible. If, then, never having come into being belongs to matter, which is the greater thing, how will the lesser not belong to it as well, not being destroyed? And if it is not destroyed, being eternal, it could not be a corruption of itself, and there would be no substance of corruption.

When those who set out from the madman hear such arguments, they are at a loss and say, “Whence, then, come evils? Whence the disorder that appears in things?” But it has often been said that through ignorance of the arrangement of things and of the divine governance they have produced for themselves an erroneous and blasphemous knowledge: through ignorance of the things they thought they knew, which they knew worse than when they were ignorant of them, losing what they sought more truly than before they sought it. But the discourse will in due time, God granting, show that what they regard as the disorder of things is the highest order, and will show that of the things they call evils some are evil only as deeds done, and others are in no way evil in substance.

“For there was once,” he says, “a time when matter was in disorder, and it begot and grew and went on putting forth many powers. Having grown, then, it was carried upward, not knowing that the good existed. And when, carried up further, it saw the land and the light of the good, it tried to set foot on what was not its own. But the good one sends a certain power, to which he gives the name he pleases, supposedly to guard the borders, but in truth to be a bait that would bring about the unwilling chastening of matter”; and that is what happened. For when matter saw the power that had been sent, it rushed toward it as though in love, and seizing it with greater force it swallowed it, and was bound in a way like a wild beast. For they use this illustration too: that by the incantation of the power that was sent it was put to sleep. In this way, he says, there came about a mixing and blending of the swallowed power of the good and of the matter that swallowed it, and so from both this universe was fashioned, by the good, clearly, for evil would not have planned the making of a world. Hence, they say, some things are good and others evil, since that blending and meeting of the two appears in the opposition of things here. He defines every soul as belonging to the portion of the good, and the body and the flesh as belonging to matter, which in one way holds the soul as in a prison and in another is held like a beast by the incantation. So, having outwitted matter, the good one became (he says) the creator of the world, not because he aspired to create it (for matter resists him), but because of the uprising of evil, which he intended to chasten. Yet it did not prove possible to remove the poison of evil from the visible world, and that it remains is shown, he says, by the disorder and (as he supposes) the inequality of our affairs: that one man is rich and another poor, one honoured and another without honour, and the like. And the good one’s concern is to free the soul from evil and in a way to draw it up out of matter; and this happens through the moon, as it waxes and wanes, as we think we see. For in truth (he says) the moon, like a water jar, is filled from the substance held captive and is emptied into the good of the same kind. Even if he does not say it in these words, this is what he means to say; it has been put by us much more decently, for in him the outlandishness and implausibility of the narrative is very great. The other things he tells like an old woman’s tales and writes in the Syrian tongue (how the earth is carried, where he does not escape the myth of the poets; how rains arise, that they are the sweat of the rulers of matter), these and such sideshows of his contests it would be superfluous to bring forward for refutation. What he writes in his raving about each subject should be made known to all, but we must by no means consent to stretch the discourse into endless prattle; it is enough to refute the main point of his irrational madness and to despise the rest. And if it did not happen that the discourse on providence necessarily includes this hypothesis (for through that discourse it is fitting to show that all things, being well and divinely ordered, proclaim the ineffable wisdom of God), it would be laughable to think the doctrines set out worthy even of a reply; for, heaped together outside the common notions, they carry their own refutation with sensible people. It would have been enough, having shown no less that two principles, and especially two opposite principles, could not exist, to treat at once of man and of the rest of creation; but nothing prevents us from seeing the implausibility of the doctrines set out as well.

For matter, he says, was once in disorder. What disorder? Being by itself? Or against whom? For no wrongdoing could be wrongdoing against itself; it needs someone else against whom it may be done. Against whom, then, was it disorderly, when it shared in nothing else? Or what is the meaning of its disorder? First, he says, as it went on it begot and grew. Then, being eternal, it begot eternally. For it must be one of two things: either it did this by reasoning and was master of its will, or it begot by necessity of nature and was compelled by its nature never not to beget. But they deny it reasoning and knowledge and introduce an irrational nature. If, then, it was carried eternally by necessity of nature toward its emissions, however long one may say the stretch of time is from when it was restrained until now, plainly the unbegotten one was begetting for ten thousand times as many ages before this, and what is eternal will have no room to begin anything new. For either it will begin something new by nature and never had ceased doing so (if this should even be called something new), so that the good one’s dealing with it has no beginning in time at all; or it did this by reasoning and has reason and knowledge, and the hypothesis of an irrational evil is overturned. Whether, then, it rose up by reasoning or by irrational impulse, what reason was there for it to let endless ages pass before such an uprising? For the time from when he says it was restrained until now would be a point of time compared with the infinite ages before it; for what has a beginning and an end is bounded, but those ages are altogether endless, eternal and unbegotten. Then, if it was stirred to evil by reasoning toward the uprising, how was the impossibility of the attempt not also cut short by reasoning, since it is impossible to overrun invincible wisdom? This is why they have avoided granting it reasoning and knowledge, so that the fiction of the uprising against God may have room. And necessarily, being drawn by ignorance and an irrational nature, it will not wait endless and infinite ages arming itself and surrounding itself with power, so as to become readier for its daring. For even if it became greater by what it begot, it did not increase the impulse of its nature, nor did its natural motion gain anything, nor would it have waited first to grow and then rise up; for that belongs to the purpose of a rational nature doing evil. And how could there be growth of evil, or addition through emissions? For if it is perfected in evil by what it begets, the evil was imperfect and not at the extreme of evil. But if each of the opposites is perfect and extreme by its own definition, evil will by no means seem to grow through its emissions, nor will it become bolder, since it is not rational, nor will it take them on to help itself; for evil will then seem to have been imperfect before it bore offspring, not only in evil but also in strength and might, which is foreign to the unbegotten.

Explaining the manner of this uprising, he says: “Those who came from it drove and devoured one another, inflicting terrible and grievous things; and they did not stop rising against one another,” he says in these very words, “until at last they caught sight of the light. For pursued by one another, though ignorant, they nonetheless dared to be carried up as far as the light.” And what could be more implausible or more mythical than this? That those who claim one mother and are united by kinship of nature should attack one another for nothing, devour one another’s limbs, and never stop doing it? Even if it were true, it would be better for them to be consumed by themselves, and the fool calls what was advantageous disorder for nothing. For he defines the disorder before the world chiefly as this, the disorder of evil, and he names it so as though he were grieved for matter, because it was being consumed by itself unfittingly. Like a friend of hers, distressed at the harm she did herself, he calls disorder what she did, to advantage, against herself, when he ought to have called evil’s destruction of itself the highest order.

But he says, “They were in disorder and wronged one another, but when they saw the light they stopped.” Then the light plotted against what was advantageous, if it rescued the wicked from one another and, like a physician’s medicine, did good to the sick. It was not the part of a good being to spare evil so that it remained and was preserved and was not consumed by itself; for if he prevented it from being spent by itself, he plainly preserved it himself. And what he says put an end to the disorder would more truly be disorder.

“When, then,” as the book they use says in these very words, “quarrelling with one another, they came up as far as the borders and saw the light, a most beautiful and comely sight, then, inspired by the motion within them, they took counsel against the light, what they could do to mingle themselves with the better. But they were not able to reason this out; rather, from desire for the better, thinking it would be their own prey, they marched against it, being many.” He fails to notice that he grants the sons of evil the finest qualities of all. For if they looked with love on what was most beautiful and comely, and desiring it thought it their own prey, plainly their judgment was right; so that those who have no share in reason even deliberate how they may mingle themselves with the light. And it would then be envy not to let them enjoy the good. For the madman’s argument does not stand. If they were raging against one another, they ought to have been left to be destroyed by one another; but if they desired the light as people of good taste, it was fitting to allow them to enjoy it (for the desire for the good is in every way of good taste and praiseworthy by nature). They could not enjoy it, desiring it as they did (as the man who writes up the madman’s teaching says), yet they could not destroy it either; for the good is wholly such that it can neither be consumed nor otherwise plotted against by those who share in it.

They all marched together. But how, when they did not know who opposed them? For the Writing itself, from which we have cited the madman’s words, says that they did not know that God dwelt in the light, nor that, having dared to attack the dwelling of God, they would never get away unpunished. If, then, they did not know of the opposing hindrance, it is wholly unreasonable that they should campaign against things from which they did not know they were kept. It would have been likely for them to arm themselves, as he says, with fire and darkness, if they had known beforehand that they were kept from what belonged to others. But since they were entirely ignorant, to describe armour and an army against no one at all expected to oppose them belongs to an argument not only implausible but plainly self-contradictory. No less contradictory is it to say in one place that desire for the light came upon them, and to admit in another that they used warlike preparation against it. For every enemy puts forward warlike arms against the one who opposes him, not against the prize he desires. If, then, in their ignorance there was no opponent, how is desiring not contrary to making war? And how is this too not very contradictory: that those who never agreed with one another in what is natural conspired together? “Together,” he says, “they took counsel against the light.” How did those who fed on one another’s limbs and never ceased raging against one another come to agree in what is against nature, in desire and anger at once against the better? And if the sight of the light did them good, how ought they not, by the good one, to have been led over to a complete change of nature by being allowed full enjoyment of the better? And how did the sight of the light that appeared do good to those who went to war, if it no longer let them exercise their madness, as was fitting, against one another, but turned it, improperly, against itself? There is much drivel in these fictions, and they can be shown to be inexcusable in other ways too. For they speak of a land of the good. What land is this, before creation? Among them the names of things come before their coming into being. For before admitting that God has made it, the most grievously mad man says that what had not yet come into being exists. For if the land came into being, it existed only once made; but if it existed without having come into being, it was co-unbegotten with God. And what need had God of land, when he made no use of land? He unreasonably names a land of God before saying that it came into being; for it was not possible to testify to its coming into being before creation.

Then, the light perceived by the senses is God’s creation, while he himself would be light perceived by the mind, not by the senses. “Evil saw,” he says, “the light of the good.” If it was the light perceived by the senses, there was as yet no world and no coming into being of a world: how did it see what had not yet come into being? For since man, who uses it, did not yet exist, to whom was the light useful? Useful things are akin to those who use them; it was certainly not useful to God, who is free of all share in what is perceived by the senses. But if it saw God himself, who is light for the mind, then it saw its like by likeness of nature; and so it must have seen sensible light. Yet for whose sake did sensible light exist before there were sensible beings? And how, in any case, does darkness see light? If it beheld light, it would not be darkness; for sense has much in common with what it senses, since its grasp is natural, through the likeness of sight to what appears: at once it takes the impress of the object, through the lawful communion of nature. Body sees body, and like grasps like; and what is better and higher in nature, even if it is not opposed, is wholly invisible to what is lower simply because it is incorporeal and the other is bodily. Is the opposite, then, visible to its opposite? If it is not invisible, then they are akin and friendly and in no way opposed. But the barbarian’s fiction is full of ruin. For he says not only “matter saw,” but also “it planned to set foot” on the light, as though making this a serious proof of its communion with the light. Perhaps, too, its offspring regretted that in the boundless ages before they had had no experience of the light. And how does darkness lay claim to light? Or for what reason does it wish to come upon it? To change its nature and become light? Or to be fed by light, a food contrary to its nature? But it wished to set foot on it in ignorance. Yet if it had known, its laying claim would have had a reason; but if it is evil by nature and ignorant, the hypothesis is wholly overturned by its not even fleeing its opposite.

What goes still further into unreason is this: that when matter beheld the power sent by the good, no longer sensible light but, as he would say, an emission of God, it rushes toward it as though in love, attacks it, swallows it, and distributes it among its own powers. And matter, for which it was impossible even to behold what was sent from the nature of the good, he says became able to swallow it. For I shall use the same argument further: if it had merely seen what was emitted from God’s substance, we would need no other argument to overturn the fiction. For it certainly saw its like, being like it; for what is wholly opposite by nature and has gone to the extreme of opposition could neither see its opposite nor come near it, since the account of opposition is entirely destroyed if it merely sees. And he adds something more absurd than what has been said, fighting hard against himself, so that no one else need speak against him. For he says, “it fell in love with the power that appeared,” as though it had wholly forgotten its own nature; not, indeed, matter, which does not exist, but these men have forgotten their own fictions. For if they say that before its uprising it had no knowledge of the good (so as not to dignify with knowledge of the good the nature they have slandered), how is it not unreasonable that what did not have within itself the knowledge that the good exists should be able to see it, and, having beheld it, to desire it? For to behold the substance with the eye is incomparably greater than to know that it exists. Indeed, not only we but also the higher powers of the angels know that the good exists, being nourished toward piety by that knowledge alone, the angels being higher in knowledge as much as in nature; but to see God in his substance belongs neither to us nor to them. Why, we cannot even see the angels themselves, as long as we are clothed with our natural body. For it is plain and clearly agreed that whoever sees something sees what is like himself. And if someone ignorantly thinks this statement unsound (for we look at the sun and the moon and the stars, and also at things beneath us, stones, gold and silver, and in general the sea and all living things, and we are certainly not like these), let him learn that, even if the kinds of the things listed are different, body is the higher genus of them all. For of substance one part is invisible as incorporeal, and the other visible as body; the first division, then, marks off all these things as a genus. Body, then, sees body, and in so far as it is body the one who sees is like and akin to what is seen, even if their kinds differ, for the variety and order of the whole. It would be laughable to deny that the bloom of gold, since it appears most beautiful to the eye, and the dullness of soot are each what each truly is called, a colour; for each is a colour, even if they differ, since the same sight has communion alike with each. So all bodies are visible, even though we say they differ in kind. And if some bodies are better than others, nothing prevents it; still they are all bodies. That is why what is visible is not at all an object of worship for the one who sees it, since it is grasped by him. If, then, matter saw what came from God’s substance, it came to the sight through very great kinship and likeness, and there would be no need to say anything more against this incoherent myth. And if it also desired what appeared, the fool has testified to the best thing of all in it, so that he seems to have given it the name of evil but to have admitted that its substance is good; for what greater proof of nobility is there than to desire the good?

And if (he says) it also seized it and swallowed it, so as to become pregnant with the substance opposite to it, God’s, and distributed it among its own powers: oh, the irrational madness! It not only saw, but also desired; and it not only desired, but also swallowed; and it not only swallowed, but also holds fast. All these things plainly do not define an opposition of nature, but confess the utmost and highest kinship of the two. For whether it swallowed what appeared in indignation (which is a sign of reasoning) or in desire, these things would plainly be a communion of nature. For if they had been utterly opposite, the two would never have come together.

Besides the rest, the barbarian did not see this either: that the power sent by God, if it was incorporeal, would have admitted no division, so that it could in no way be divided in substance among the opposing powers, nor indeed be swallowed; for in what way could the incorporeal be swallowed? But if it was bodily, every body that is cut up and broken into small pieces is in a way destroyed and can no longer live its own life. Therefore either the power sent by the good was incorporeal and was neither swallowed nor divided among many (and so the myth is wholly finished), or it was something bodily and has been entirely destroyed and has perished by evil’s doing; which is worse as an insult to the good, or rather stronger as a refutation of the myth. For a body divided and scattered in itself (a mind is not divided) has what strength to subdue evil, when it has suffered such damage and insult to its own nature that it seems to have vanished and perished? For this is what is proper to a body that is cut up.

Still more unreasonable is that God, wishing to rescue a land from evil, gave up what came from his own nature, naked, to grievous insult and corruption of its very substance, to sit for so long an age dwelling with evil, sharing in it and sinning with it. For God’s substance to suffer even for one hour or one point of time being subjected to evil and sinning with it would be the most unreasonable thing of all. And how much better would it have been to give up the land than for God’s substance to be captured? For if the attack on the land was intolerable, as being matter’s disorder, how much more unbearable is so great a slavery and subjection of God’s nature, and not for the briefest time but for a whole and boundless age, so that evil has not ceased to sin, and God sins with it through the power emitted from him? So it is likely that God would not even have wished to send to evil what was emitted from his substance so as to sin along with it, nor would that power have been persuaded and obeyed so as to come to such ruin and be filled with every lawlessness, injustice and impiety, for the sake of freeing a land (not one already taken, but one about to be taken), as though God could not protect it in some other way.

See how great a weakness the man who raged against God plainly attributes to God, as though he were the guardian of some orphan’s property, whose weakness he must admit in order to make his advocacy complete. For, as if championing the opposite, the evil that has no existence at all, he says that it has done everything against God: that it rose up, wished to set foot on what was his, and finally, the most grievous thing of all against God, became master of his substance for the whole age, cut it up (as cannot happen) into infinite pieces, chokes and crushes it within itself, and has it as its partner in every evil deed and licentiousness; while God was unable either to rescue his own place effectively in some other way, or at least to keep himself sinless, as befits his nature. For the wrongs that what is emitted from him in substance commits together with matter go straight back to him who emitted it. So, testifying that evil has every power against God, he says that God has suffered the most incurable things of all from it.

And he goes on to dare to say that the power sent by God put matter to sleep, as an incantation does a wild beast. Not only does he implausibly mix in his account things utterly opposite, and indulge his own fiction with things that are in no way possible by nature, but here too he establishes the opposite of what he wants. (For he says that God fashioned this universe out of these two, and that of man the body belongs to evil and the soul to the good, whether it is of one kind or compounded of the opposites); and in this too, as we shall show of both points a little later, it has no coherence. A body by itself neither devises nor does any evil: it does not murder, commit adultery, rob, or do any other wrong when the soul is not present to it. Yet it was for the sake of these and such things that the madman devised the existence of the opposite principle and the mixture of opposites, so that their cause might be found. But if the mixing of the soul of the good with the body of evil gave men the occasions for their wrongs (for a body by itself does no wrong), it would have been better for the fabricated power of the good not to be mixed with the evil that does not exist. For then none of the sins among men would have been practised, or existed at all. For what murder would there have been, with no one to be murdered, if the world had not come into being through the mixing of opposites, according to his most ridiculous account? What adultery, with no body, and no body desiring by itself, if the soul of the good had not been sent down? For it is one of two things: either we must say that the opposites came together by the economy of the good, so that a world might come about, as by a good being, and then he himself would be wholly the cause of the evils among men, if he willingly made use of evil against what was to come into being; or he was forced by evil, and evil has already carried off the prize of victory over the good. What murder was there (I say again), if there was neither man nor sword nor any other instrument of murder, unless the world had been framed through the meeting of the opposites? Matter by itself, even if its offspring quarrelled with one another, did not know murder, for it had nothing mortal to murder. It knew nothing of adultery, for betrothals of marriage were not practised among it. Nor was there false accusation in it, for, being irrational, it had no judging at all. Love of money, the root of evils, and love of glory it did not mention even by name; for love of money is found among men because of need, from which matter was free, and love of glory is a passion of reasoning, in which, being irrational, it had no share. Gluttony, sexual immorality and corruption of males had no place in it. And in short, all the evils that appear among men matter did not have at all before the world; so it was not fettered by the mixing, but on the contrary, according to that senseless hypothesis, like a horse that has reached the open plain, it runs freely, carried on toward the injustice of evils. For the evils that did not exist at all before the world have been practised in the world since there has been a world. For even if one grants, as he says, that the beings of matter quarrelled and raged against one another, did countless evils to one another and marched against the light, still no one will imagine that the list of human evils enumerated belonged to them, since human evils could not be done before man came into being. And where is the man who says that evil was chastened by being fettered, when before being fettered it did not even know of the evils among men, and after being fettered it is accused of them? What harm did it do to the good while it was disorderly by itself and had nothing to which to attach its disorder? It was not at all able to turn the good aside. And if it tried to set foot on places not its own, it ought to have been checked from its irrational onrush in some other way. For matter, which before showed a harmless disorder by itself, now seems to have taken on something else, against which, as present with it, it will show a more harmful disorder. So also men who are evildoers, when alone, will wish to do some evil, but having no one to do it against, they would turn out idle; and they would look on one another with goodwill, in agreement about evil. But matter neither willed (for it did not deliberate, being irrational) nor was able, being alone by itself.

So does what the madman calls matter seem to have taken on, through the soul from the good, a truer matter, to its peril, for the working of an evil it did not know? For before the world it was charged with a disorder that is unclear to us and does not appear, but it learned to work evils that are plain and visible. So the incantation woke the beast up, and did not at all put it to sleep, as he says.

And if he should say, “God did not wish the world to come into being,” we must ask: and who was it who wished it? Evil, which did not even know of it? And who is it who fashioned existing things out of both? Matter? Then its working is admirable. Or did God not wish it, but was compelled? Then he was subjected rather than subjecting. And it is superfluous to wonder at that too: that the wisdom of the good was forced into harming the things that were to come into being. For the things that were not evils at all before the opposites came together, of which not even the name was current, blossomed after the world came into being. And how is it not absurd to say that God, wishing to stop matter’s disorder, which cannot be demonstrated to us, became a contributing cause of evils of disorder that can be demonstrated and are plain to men? For the disorder of which he condemned matter he has only been able to bring forward in words, not to show by deeds; but the evils that come from the mythical and impossible mixing of opposites the fool sees with his eyes and is not ashamed. So, wishing to show God not responsible for the injustice among men, he plainly confesses him most responsible, more than he was ever concerned to show him free of it.

Come, then, let us consider truthfully to whom the evils done by men belong. He will perhaps try to introduce a mixture, in the soul too, of what he supposes are opposites. But whether the soul in his view is of one kind, from the good, or compounded of the opposites, it will easily be shown that, on this impious hypothesis, evils come from the portion opposite to evil, that of the good. Now the soul is incorporeal and in no way admits composition in its substance, least of all of opposites. Those who have thought that it is composed of different parts did not introduce a substance that is various and at odds with itself; rather, they described its activities from what it does, being unable to give one simple and comprehensive account of it. For even if by the different qualities it admits it differs from itself at different times, yet in substance, being the work of God, it is unchangeable and not composed of different things, and it is as far from mixtures of opposites as it is from seeming to be a body in itself. But let us grant, following his false account (if he should try to say this too), that the human soul is composed of good and evil. Must not its rational part, in his view, be ascribed to the good, and the irrational to evil? Plainly he could say nothing else. When, then, desire is moved to stumbling, whether from the body alone or also from the part of the soul belonging to evil, does the act come forth of itself? Do not consideration and deliberation come first in man, then judgement and choice of the act, and so desire is carried into deed? And the charge of wickedness arises from the act, not from the desire: if the thought of desire stays where it is and does not go on into deed by the choice of reason, it is, first, quickly snatched away, kindled and quenched at once, and then it would by no means be thought a charge, not only by the common standard but not even if judged by the height of virtue. It appears, then, that sins are reasonably ascribed to the rational part of the soul, and neither to the body nor to any other part of the soul; so that irrational evil is freed from the responsibility for the evils among us, since it does not even exist, and by his own account these evils run the risk of being produced from the portion of the good, unless we use another, truthful account. For if the soul went to the act irrationally without discerning the quality of the desire, one might insist that what is done unreasonably comes from the irrational part. But if reason itself often in one case chooses the desire, willingly yielding to a bad leading, and in another refuses it again, when some fear holds it back or the desire for virtue draws it the other way, plainly reason alone is the one who owns what is done well and what is done otherwise; and here the inquiry goes in the opposite direction to what the madman wrongly tries to prove. For it seems that no sin in our affairs belongs to matter, but to the soul (or to its rational part), which in his view belongs to the portion of the good.

Besides this, if it were the case that in those who practise self-control the disposition toward desire were unmoved, one might free reason from the charges among the licentious, as though desire, which he would say belongs to the portion of evil, carried off the whole of what is done. But if one finds the practice of self-control above all in those who lay claim to it in this way, that by reason they check the desires of nature, it is clearly shown that reason is the one that does wrong and does right, the one that knows both virtue and vice.

Why the desire for sins is implanted in us we shall say in due time, showing that this above all contributes to the admiration of the Creator. But if what is now sought, that our wrongdoings are in no way the work of any matter or evil but on the contrary of reason alone, has not been sufficiently shown, the point can also be established another way. Would he say that anything else is evil but murder, sexual immorality and adultery, theft and lying? Plainly these will be evil above all. What then? If a judge puts the wrongdoer to death, would that be thought murder? Yet the deed of one who kills by violence and of one who puts to death by law is the same; it is the purpose that distinguishes what is done. And again, the act of intercourse with one’s own wife and with another man’s is the same for the man, but reason, by its purpose, separates things done in like manner. Further, if one steals from a madman the tools or poisons he has ready for a plot, how would the deed not seem the same as the theft that is condemned? Yet to reason it is not the same, but wholly different. Besides, if a man who has gone mad demands back a sword that he deposited while sane, so that the one who received it must lie and say he did not receive it, in what would the lie differ in words from real dishonesty, unless it were distinguished by the purpose of what is asserted? It is plain from this, then, that it is not the act that is mostly judged in itself, but the intention and reasoning of the one who undertakes it. The same principle can be found in blameless deeds too. For if someone gives money or food to the poor man not out of love for him but hunting for praise from those who see, is it not plain that the deed is most beautiful and humane, but the purpose very base and blameworthy? And if someone prays long and fasts often, displaying to men both piety and endurance, it is evident that he would not rightly be praised for the deed but blamed for the mind behind what he does. And again, if another man is self-controlled and abstains from most desires, not from longing for virtue but to spare his money, is it not evident that such a man masters some passions by another passion, pursuing in his purpose this very apparent endurance instead of vice? If, then, things thought evil often appear good, or not evil, by the intention of the one who does them, and on the contrary things taken for better are shown to be evil by the choice and purpose of the one who undertakes them, who could still object that in truth it is not mostly the acts that are judged, but the mind behind what is done that is put to the test?

What deeds, then, shall we reckon to evil? Those that seem evil, which are good when they are done with the intention of virtue? And what shall we ascribe to the good? Those that appear good, which become evil by the reasoning behind them? Then we shall not assign either strictly to either, but shall judge only the rational and most commanding part of the mind of the one who acts, whether it undertook what was done rightly or not. And that the most commanding part of human thought belongs entirely, by his account, to the better part of the soul, the madman’s followers would not deny even if they went mad ten thousand times over. So Mani has passed a wholly unjust sentence on the matter he himself invented, charging it with things that in no way belong to it, if indeed it were the cause of the things done among men; on the contrary, these would reasonably be thought to belong rather to the portion of the good, if indeed there are two opposite principles, according to his madness.

He says that God is anxious to take back to himself the swallowed power, which he calls the soul of all things, so that what is his own may not go on being bound to matter and punished endlessly for ever. Why, then, did he risk it in the first place, so that for so long an age it could not even draw breath, and suffered rather than acted? If the myth had held that God suffered no insult to his own substance and was not held fast by matter even for the briefest moment (which would be most unfitting), but that it was something else, utterly foreign to his nature, and that this too was at once rescued, so that he might seem to have carried out such a dealing as a figure rather than by submission, the fiction would have had at least some plausibility in its falsehood. But as it is, they say that a boundless age has passed and that this power, which is from God’s nature, remains shut in; so that he himself seems to be the one held fast, through the likeness of what is held fast and its being from his nature. That is why he longs with greater eagerness to gather it back to himself, while matter remains simple and unaffected, as one that acted rather than suffered. From this it is plain that everything the deceiver put together he composed as blasphemy against God, who did none of these things to himself.

He wishes, then, and is eager (he says) to take that power back to himself. And this is the salvation and blessedness they hope for: that what is God’s own should be given back to him. Does he then wait for the end for himself, hoping to receive a benefit, if he is to recover the freedom of what is from his nature, so as to build up what he destroyed and nothing more? And does he sit, fed on hope, enduring and looking to the end, so that he may in a way free himself from evil? If that is slow and does not come quickly, he himself would be the one punished by the delay. For plainly the speed of the end is not in his power either; otherwise he would long ago have used it and enjoyed what he hoped for.

For there is another ridiculous account of the madman’s: that the beings of matter, perceiving that they will perish miserably as the light is taken away little by little, devised in return the making of the flesh, the greatest bond for souls. So plainly, by his account, as long as they keep the flesh going, so long will the souls of the good be held fast; and it will be in their power that the world is not bounded in time, and its end will not be in the power of the good.

What might one say, seeing that the madman’s account never stands still, but, shifted this way and that, is refuted by itself? For while he says that God is the creator of the world, he then says that the beings of matter set up the flesh against him, as though God shared the work of creation with them, and in this suffered violence, and completed the universe by exchange with them, not by his own will. And as though the deceiver had forgotten his own hypothesis, he says that the removal of the power mixed with matter will be ruinous to matter, the power through which he supposed matter, disorderly at first, was chastened. For if by its presence it binds evil, by withdrawing it will let it loose again, and it will be very much according to the old …

… this is a cause of joy to matter too, the removal of this power, as of a pleasure taken away. If, then, even if not before the end, there is still hope for it to return to God, having been separated from him, why did he decide in the first place that it should undergo for a boundless age vain toil and evil filth, and set its being taken up again in place of the hope of blessedness? For matter has nowhere been shown to have been chastened at all; on the contrary, it has gained more power for devising wicked deeds. “But it had to be bound,” he says. When, then, the power held captive is drawn out little by little, what will happen? Evidently matter will return to its natural disorder. “No,” he says, “for at the end he will overcome it, and making it a clod he will cause it to be burned up by itself.” Why, then, did he not do this at the beginning? Did he not wish to, or was he not able? If he did not wish to, how will he wish to later? Having changed his mind, or having judged it better? And in any case it was not the part of a good being not to abolish evil wholly at the beginning, if he was able. But if he was not able, the danger of weakness rises up against the one who invented this; and how will he be able to later? By taking on a power he did not have, or by growing or increasing? For if both opposites are unbegotten, neither admits growth or diminution. So the barbarian’s whole fiction is incoherent. And why does he say that it has perceived the greater part, or at least the lesser part, of the power mixed with matter being drawn off, if indeed ever since the moon waxes and wanes God goes on recovering his own little by little? Yet so long an age has passed, and neither has the human race diminished in the number of the living, nor has any kind of four-footed animal undergone any decrease; but what comes to be comes to be and passes away as usual, and humanity has increased even more in number. Whence, then, does that raving man think that the power he invents, which he says was mixed with evil, is being removed little by little, if things in the world stay the same in the same way? The measure of the day is the same, and the same that of the night; neither has the light diminished nor the darkness increased; for the course of the sun and the moon is the same, and the one order established from the beginning remains.

We must also ask this: will the souls that have sinned and been carried into countless evils in this life pay the penalty for their wrongdoing or not? If they will pay it, as he himself admits when he says that they will be fixed in the clod together with evil, God will be found punishing his own nature; and what could be more absurd than that? But if they will go unpunished, sin will not only be painless and without loss, but would seem to have the advantage over righteousness, if in the present age it brings pleasure to the one who pursues it and in the age to come is no cause of punishment. And besides all this, wonder at this too in him, where he says that while evil is busy here, God meanwhile fills up with earth the deep from which matter emerged; in his most dreadful derangement he does not understand that, if what is thrown in is from the land of the good, how does it find room in the opposite place? And if it is from the parts of evil, it will not shut out what is its own, which started from there. And God sits, according to the madman, carrying earth through the age and little by little filling up certain depths. Oh, the irrational madness, to which in most points even to reply is laughable!

The discourse now leads us to serious discussion about God. For what has been said to overturn that man’s mythology was perhaps no different from play. So, lest we too incur laughter among sensible people by examining too curiously a fiction so incoherent, we shall not think worthy of discussion the many more mythical things the madman has invented (and they are very many), and shall now try to show that evil nowhere exists in substance, that no beginningless principle of matter is set against God, but that there is one principle of the universe and one God who made all things good and worthy of his wisdom. For when his followers have been refuted in argument about their incoherent principles, they fall back on this question, as hard to settle and as offering many handholds against the one who argues with them, saying, “Whence, then, come evils?”

We say boldly that, since there is one God who made all things, nothing in existing things is evil in substance, but all things are very good, good in different ways, and made for various uses; and nothing that has come into being has come into being without reason, but each existing thing, small and great, has in itself the reason for its being, whether in heaven, on earth or in the sea. And like a sound and complete body, God’s ineffable wisdom has framed this universe by the arrangement of its parts and members, so that whatever you remove in thought from created things as superfluous and foreign to use, the whole body seems to be mutilated; since what seems quite contemptible among existing things helps to complete the perfection of the body, and nothing among existing things is idle, or made in vain, or put in for superfluous display. Only the injustice of sinning men is reasonably and rightly superfluous, and truly evil; yet it does not come from a beginningless evil, which, though it does not exist, Mani imagined as existing, as the discourse has already sufficiently hinted in what came before and will show more clearly in what follows. So, having first dealt with this, we shall proceed in order, showing that nothing that exists is evil in substance, and that whatever God arranges in the course of generation he arranges fittingly for his wisdom and to the advantage of those for whom he does these things.

God, then, made a world, and on this those against whom the discourse is directed are not in dispute. For even if they turn the world, which is ordered, into disorder, yet they agree about the manner and the cause of its coming into being. In this world God set man, a part of the whole but a rational citizen of it; and the other things, which have no bearing on virtue or vice, he has kept for himself to govern, but virtue or vice alone he has made to lie in man’s power, having placed beforehand in his nature the knowledge of each, so that, carrying it with him like an eye, he may not only travel through life with perfect knowledge but also be himself the doer of virtue’s achievements. A man who does wrong, then, is justly charged with sinning. For if he commits sin without being able to keep from it, he incurs unjust blame; but if, being able not to do it, he does the opposite, he is reasonably charged as a wrongdoer. And sin is rightly called a charge when it is done against reason (which can be used everywhere), so that everything done against reason is sin, even if it takes its occasion from what is natural. For it is the irrational use of natural things that makes sin, and there is reason in us that tests natural things; so sin does not go unnoticed when it is done. If, then, we exercise the reason in us for the practice of virtue, as we exercise the body, we make it healthy and strong by well-measured movement; but if we do not think it worth exercise and care, it grows weak and dim and at last, neglected, is maimed. And it lies in our power everywhere to use the reason in us, as builders use the square, for the exactness of virtue, and to cultivate it like seeds sown in the earth, which perish when they are neglected.

Here the doubtful point of the inquiry arises. Why have we been exposed to so great a danger, having it in our own power to be earnest or not, so that we do not turn out wholly good, but mostly (not merely sometimes) evil? The danger is necessary, not merely useful, since otherwise we would miss everything. For if God had made us wholly unable to sin, we would not have become good. For among men the good man is the just and self-controlled man; and he becomes just by keeping from injustice, and is made self-controlled by fleeing licentiousness. So the power over opposites makes the acquisition possible, since if someone does not have the power to be licentious, he could not become self-controlled; for one might say, “Who is so able to act that he has not acted licentiously?” For inability to be licentious does not make self-control, nor does weakness toward injustice make justice; rather, to be able to act but to refrain by reason, this is the virtue of self-control and justice; and not only to be able, but to be provoked by nature, so that there may be true praise for choosing not to act. For this alone, and no other, can be found among men as virtue. God must not be called self-controlled or brave and the like (for he is above human virtue; and even if he is called just, it is in another sense, not as we are); but we are asking how man, as man, could become good. For to each created thing a measure of nature has been set, which it is impossible to exceed, and not to fall short of it is complete virtue. What measure, then, has been set for man for virtue and for becoming good? Self-control, justice and the rest; for it is impossible for a man to become good beyond these. And if self-control is mastery of pleasures, the opposites of self-control must lie in our power, against which mastery is exercised, the name and work of self-control. Not to have the pleasures in one’s power plainly deprives one of self-control; and the same holds for justice and the rest. And if someone objects that we ought to be incapable of the opposites (licentiousness and injustice), as God is, such a person says nothing else than that we ought not to be human; as if someone, watching an eagle flying high above, were annoyed at the nature of the horse and bitterly blamed it as not like the eagle’s, when he ought to examine a horse according to a horse’s nature.

God made man a man, that is, a soul with a body; for the inhabitant of the world is bodily. If, then, he becomes good as far as human nature allows, he would be found approved. So we must ask how man could become good, if God has made him. Then man would become good if he were self-controlled and just. For if it is possible for man to become good in a better way, the Creator is to be blamed for not making man good in that way. But if, as far as human nature goes, man could need nothing better than self-control and the rest, we must ask again how it is possible for man to be self-controlled and just; for his Creator wishes him to be these. Self-control, then, could not come about without the presence of its opposite, and likewise justice; otherwise there would be neither self-control nor justice. And if it were not possible in this way to become just and self-controlled, man could not become just and self-controlled in any other way; and then the Creator might reasonably be blamed for making it impossible for man to become good, I mean self-controlled and just, the only way, and no other, in which he would win good repute and be shown worthy of the wisdom of the one who made him.

And if the objector insists that man ought to have become self-controlled by nature and not by toil, he again abandons what self-control is and turns aside to an irrational choice: he grants that without self-control and justice it is impossible to be worthy of the Creator, but he is unwilling to examine the manner of acquiring them; namely, that what comes about by a bond of nature would not be self-control, which is known in no other way than by resistance to pleasures. … It needs, then, things that oppose it, so that by fighting and mastering them it may be called and become self-control. And so too with the rest.

So he has made man by nature neither good nor evil, but has entrusted to his reason the choice of the better. And if he is neither good nor evil, what he is remains to be asked. Consider the little child, known by the removal of the extremes, I mean neither good nor evil. Its substance is fair, but it has not yet acquired the good that comes by virtue. So too gold is fair by nature, but not good in the sense of virtue, since it is lifeless; and precious stones likewise, and all existing things, each according to the beauty proper to it to the eye. On this account man too is fair, very fair, in substance and in his very being, but the good, which comes only through virtue, he acquires by toil; and that is why God has made this lie in his power. If, then, he had given the power but had not placed beforehand in his nature the knowledge of virtue and vice, he would have seemed to set a blind charioteer over a very swift chariot. But since he joined both together, power for acquiring the better and knowledge for discerning and for safety in choosing, he made the mind a skilled charioteer as well, and it will drive the chariot of nature safely, unless it falls asleep on the course and is thrown off by pleasures.

In substance and nature man is fair, like gold, like a precious stone, as a work of God; but he is good, or on the contrary evil, by purpose. These lie before him as things that can be done; they are qualities that come upon him according to the upbringing he receives and the choice of his purpose, so that evil, which consists only in action, does not exist before it is done. Man does have power over evil, which can be done, not in order to do it, but so that by not doing it he may be shown to be excellent. For if he did not have the power to do it, he would have seemed to suffer envy from the Creator, to hinder his good repute and to deprive him of freedom, as not having it in his power to become good; so that what seems a disadvantage is most truly an advantage of nature. As it is, evil comes upon him by no means by force, since it does not exist in substance. But if he did not have power over it, he would not have it in his power to flee it. For he flees non-being not as existing, but as able to come to be by his doing. And how would he have acquired hatred of evil, which is most beautiful, unless, being able to do such things, he willingly refused them? For virtue among men is hardly anything other than refusal of evil: the self-controlled man is the one who is not licentious, the just man the one who is not unjust, and so with the rest. God is good not by not doing wrong, even though he is able, but only by doing good (that is why he alone is good); but among men the good first consists in fleeing the worse, the power over which must be present, so that it may be in the power of one who wishes to become good not to do it. For even if the perfect man is required also to do good deeds besides fleeing their opposites, still fleeing the worse counts for more toward good repute. So one would find no one among men who never stumbles, since that would be more highly esteemed because of the difficulty of keeping from sin, for virtue is characterized above all in this way; but a good deed we find even among the very wicked. It is plain, then, that man is benefited by the power to do wrong, by keeping from which (and in no other way) he wins good repute.

Man, therefore, has been honoured with freedom over virtue and vice, having by nature the knowledge of these, which can be done but do not exist before they are done. For where would the deed be, if the doer did not exist? So evil comes to be and ceases to be as it is done and not done. Indeed God too, being good and knowing only how to do good, does no evil; yet he neither keeps from evil through ignorance nor is wholly separated from it through inability. For how is he ignorant of it, he who teaches us not to do it? And how is it reasonable to think that God keeps from evil through inability? For the good one is good not by inability to do wrong, but by the perfect power of not willing it. And if we say that God cannot do anything unjust, we speak rightly.

Yet we do not take “cannot” to mean weakness, but the height of not willing and the unshakeable refusal of the worse. For being unchangeable in nature, he has an unchangeable not-willing to do any evil, so that he is able, but does not do it, by the unchangeable nature of his not willing. And so there is no evil with God, not only in that it does not exist, but in that it is not even done. But since among men the refusal of evil is in some way not unchangeable (even if someone has risen high in virtue), evil seems to exist only when it is done, and does not exist beforehand when it is not done.

In this way God has honoured man, making him in his own image, so that, as he himself is good by freedom of nature, so man too may be an emulator of God by freedom of purpose, keeping from sin not by an inability of nature, but honouring virtue in freedom. This is sufficiently indicated also by the fact that many changes toward virtue and vice are often found among men, in those in whom neither of these is fixed by long habit. For what we do by necessity of nature admits no change; but what we do by the reason of our purpose is now one way, now another in us, according to the inclinations that arise in our purpose. Sinning, then, is not natural and necessary for men; doing evil is a matter of choice. And the toil of virtue also indicates the free choice of those who have acquired it: if even a little negligence arises in them, the possession is in danger,

And if someone brings forward against the argument the man who sometimes wishes to keep from bad things but says that he is unable, let him learn that a long-standing bodily affliction too is not easily dislodged. So too a bad state of the soul, set hard by time, does not easily escape what it is long accustomed to, unless some greater and good emotion comes in and drives out the former one. For example, someone who has often rushed uncontrollably toward some bad deed, or who has set his mind on adultery, has been checked on seeing the woman’s husband, by fear of his desire being exposed or by remembering the laws; another, set on robbery, has punished his desire by dread of the penalty. So sins are the works of passions, not outgrowths of nature. And all of us who have a share of decency honour and love the laws, which punish evildoers without mercy. So by our deeds we declare by common consent that people are not forced by nature to do evil, but that by choosing it in their purpose they show themselves worthy of punishment.

And since the madman’s followers try in another way too to prove that there are two opposite natures in us, from the fact that we sometimes think of bad things and at other times of good, it must be pointed out that, since the knowledge of both is natural in us, we are necessarily moved to think of what we know, losing nothing at all, but gaining everything by preferring the better. For how could men’s voluntary movement toward the better have been attested, if our thought did not naturally reach out to both, injustice and justice? Knowledge is necessary for discernment; thought feels its way over what is known; and purpose inclines to what it wishes. These are not different parts of the soul, but its activities, as it were. Just as our eye naturally has the power to see one thing or another, it may be bad deeds and good, and would be the cause of neither (for the mind takes over from sight and judges what is seen), so too thought, like the eye, necessarily moves toward what can come to be, not forcing the soul toward it, but reaching out to it by natural knowledge. Indeed we can, if we wish, think of opposites at the same time, but we cannot do opposites at the same time. So action is defined by the choice of purpose, while thought bears witness to the natural knowledge of virtue and vice. For if we did not know these beforehand, we would neither have thought of them nor chosen the better … deprived of it by choosing the worse altogether, taken over beforehand by bad upbringing. That is why men should take more trouble over the upbringing of children than farmers over the growth of plants. To take our thinking, then, as evidence of two opposite natures would be like saying that sight is a mixture of all colours because it reaches out to them all.

That man, then, necessarily received the possibility of sinning, being so made that he could not otherwise acquire the ability to do right, which God, being good and without envy, placed in his nature; and that, so far at least, the wrongs among men give no reason to set a beginningless matter and evil against God, or to think that evil exists in substance at all, rather than having its existence in action: this has been demonstrated by what has been said.

It remains to speak, as far as we can, about God’s all-wise governance and about the created things slandered in vain as evil by the madman. He condemns much disorder in our affairs, attacking wealth and poverty, health and sickness, as unequal; and also that often the evildoer escapes the penalty of the laws while the innocent is punished, and that bad men sometimes rise to rule over others. We must say, then, that man was brought into life by his Creator to trade in nothing else but piety and virtue alone. If he acquires these, he will swim well through this life; but if he neglects them, he will be grievously plunged under as he wanders. Food for the body, clothing to wear and other shelter God has given him not as the principal gifts, but as necessary for keeping him in being here, so that, being with a body, he may have life through these, and may pursue without hesitation the toil of acquiring what has been mentioned. And he provided bodily light suited to his nature, air for breathing, water and all the other necessary things. These belong by nature to all men in common from God, and no one could say that the poor man has a smaller share of light or of the supply of water, or of breathing, which is most natural for life. And necessary food he provides (even if not without sweat); still the manner of supplying what is needed for life is common to all. Gold, silver and precious stones also come from him to those who possess them, but they would contribute nothing more to the trade we have spoken of; rather they would hinder it. Yet the journey God set before men is neither out of reach for poverty nor easier for wealth; in either condition the very earnest can cut the road set before them. Poverty by endurance and freedom of spirit, and wealth by moderation and by honouring the giver above his gifts, would achieve what is sought. So the poor man cannot reach the achievement without difficulty and toil, but needs attention (even if he has a certain freedom from care), so as not to do anything servile for the sake of his poverty, nor, being vexed at it, to show by his purpose that he would value God’s gifts more highly than God; and the man who possesses very great wealth cannot procure for himself piety and virtue as by purchase, but needs more sweat for it. For such a man is likely to be more storm-tossed in mind, divided in his concern between external things and the things of the soul; so that, unless he thinks wealth wholly secondary and friendship with God his only work, he will be plunged into utter folly, not understanding that, having left the first and only good, he serves dead wealth, which he will leave to others when he departs. The journey of virtue, then, is equally free of danger for neither rich nor poor, yet out of reach for neither; they differ only in the outward wrappings, which contribute nothing to what is set before them,

… since God’s wisdom has arranged this too of necessity. For the poor man is trained to endurance by seeing wealth with another, and the rich man is tested in his disposition by the poor man’s want. Wealth without poverty beside it is useless (for whom will it benefit?), and poverty is untested without wealth set against it. And in general neither being rich is blessed nor being poor pitiable, since that man alone is blessed who has the firm well-being of the soul according to virtue (whether he is rich or poor), for whose sake man was made by God; so that he must receive being from God, and receive the addition of the good from himself, with God working with him. For God wishes man, being rational, to have something from himself as well, for glorious boldness. So we shall not admire or call blessed a rich man who does evil, nor shall we be perplexed about God’s providence because such a man is rich. For what more has a wicked rich man? And what does he not have less of? Sleepless nights and dangers because of his money, griefs at what is spent greater than the pleasures of what is gained. For what is present does not gladden so much as what is absent grieves; and desire always grows with wealth, so that reason lives constantly with an unbridled passion, and the body often wastes away along with reason. So what seems the advantage of the man of property turns out a worse disadvantage. Living in luxury and the softness of his bed, he sometimes falls into various illnesses, while the poor man gains health for his body by the plainness of his necessary diet. And who would say that the body is not to be valued above external things? If, then, the state of the body remains stronger in those who are moderate in necessities, while in those relaxed by unmeasured luxury the vigour of the body too is brought down, how is it not evident that in this respect too wealth is less than poverty? Unless someone should be found to lack even necessities, which never happens to the man earnest for virtue. And does the pleasure of costly dishes last in the senses of those who always use them, or is it not much cheapened by long habit? So that such people have nothing more to bring in for their luxury; for what is customary is always despised. But to the poor man plain food is most pleasant because of his health, and costly food (if it ever comes) is strange and quite new, for relaxed enjoyment; so that in this respect the man who uses right reasoning would find the poor man to have more than the rich.

Sickness and health are likewise necessary. For health serves the work of virtue, and sickness sometimes serves to overturn sin. For reason is often helped by external hindrances, and besides, the experience of illness reminds us of the benefit of health, toward reverence. Health would be quite despised if it remained by itself absolutely, with nothing able to hinder it. If the decent man is sick and the reckless man healthy, the one is held back by the hindrance, helped toward the blamelessness of his own life, while the other is given over to wrongdoing as one given up. And if again the reckless and very impious man falls into sickness while the decent man is healthy, the one is punished not to be helped toward awareness, but to serve as an example to those who see; and the other remains free of sickness as one able to live gently without fetters. And in general both are useful everywhere, and wretched is the man who for this reason denies or slanders providence; for the only deadly sickness is the one that corrupts the disposition of the soul so as to turn it from virtue. Those whose reason stays innocent, then, whether their body is sick or healthy, will perceive the usefulness of each. For if sickness does not always punish the evildoer, since evildoers sometimes escape the laws too, would the law then for that reason not be a hindrance to evildoing, since it does not reach all who are subject to it? Or is not the wonder of God’s wisdom shown from this as from every side? For if it were wholly plain that no one who does anything forbidden could escape the punishment of the laws, the absence of sin would be counterfeit and quite untested; for all would keep from it out of dread of the penalty, not out of hatred of evildoing. But the earnest man must hate doing wrong more than suffering it, even if it befalls him unjustly. That is why most evildoers escape the laws: punishment is not this for sinners, but only the appearance of a penalty. For natural death would come even without punishment, so that the inescapable penalty for lawbreakers is another. But most escape our penalty so that the possibility of escaping notice may become a test of human reasoning; and in general what has been said extends to the one who steals, the one who lies, and those who attempt the greater evils.

One might say that men’s purpose would have been tested more if no evildoer were punished when convicted; but on the contrary it has plainly become an encouragement to evildoing that some who pursue evil are never caught by the laws. So both are necessary: that the evildoer should fall into punishment, as an example to turn others back, and that he should escape, as a test of reasoning. For to man, who is free to choose virtue and vice, having been so made by God, there is also from outside help and in a way support for his mind, as through fear and fearlessness, encouragements and discouragements, sickness and health, poverty and wealth. And all the things that seem opposed to one another tend harmoniously to one end, to exercise the human mind, so that it does not fall asleep at all, but, struck from this side and that, stays awake for the work of piety and virtue.

And if it should happen that a man not only innocent but admirable is punished, and the penalty is exacted of him for his virtue, what harm would it bring to the sufferer? It convicts those who do it, but does not harm the one who endures it, even if the irrational punishment goes as far as death. For such a man has already practised, by deadness to it, what concerns this life. For to one to whom nothing that the many find pleasant or unpleasant is either, how has such a man not become dead to life even before death? He receives what is thought a plot as a favour, since after the present life he expects to meet greater goods than those he seems to leave; and being quickly sent on to them by his enemies, he has those who plot against him as benefactors. And besides, God’s permitting of torment among men is necessary, so that the choice of virtue may be more approved, if one does not fear even death.

And when we sometimes see wicked and grasping men in power and entrusted with office, we must know that this too is a permission of God’s economy. For when sin abounds among those who are ruled, the injustice of the rulers becomes a just punishment, as they punish what the people do and chastise what they do; so that it becomes most plain that lawlessness does not go unpunished. It would seem uprightness in a judge to punish those who do wrong, since he himself does no evil; but if the judge himself, taking the lead in such things, punishes those who pursue the same, and more lavishly, so as to persuade people that he himself does nothing bad, justice plainly appears victorious and very terrible, in that those who for their perversity of ways justly fall under such rulers pay the penalty. For such clear sentences from God against sinners are found in the holy Scriptures.

But the most grievously mad man, so that his dogma of an unbegotten evil and his blasphemy against God may prevail with him, has left no part of God’s governance unslandered. One can often see righteous men who have sinned coming under the ungodly, like a well-born child who disobeys his father being beaten by a stranger, so that, with the pain of the blows, the disgrace of the one who carries it out may change the offender. For we have said one thing alone, and it is true: that man, made by God, is required in this life to achieve by the understanding of reason the not wronging virtue in anything; and whoever attends to this alone, nothing else in life … If this is remembered throughout the discourse on providence, nothing would be suspected of inequality and disorder in what God governs. For if one should find that the journey of pious virtue is open to one and shut to another, then, as to the present chief of goods, the inequality would seem to have grounds for slandering the governance. But if that by which alone one could truly be blessed lies before all in common, equally within their power, what difference or inequality could anyone speak of (even if he loves to find fault), when the advantages of external things are bent back again to equality by reasoning? For the poor man takes no less, or even more, pleasure in the food he eats than the rich man. And it is the same with shelter, even if it is less costly. And what is habitually at hand shapes perception, so that no one perceives the greater, since perception is dulled by habit, nor another the lesser, since habit does not bring what is lacking to perception. For example, barbarians, who go about naked for the most part, sleep without bedding and live on poor food, have never consented to leave their beloved way of life, since through habit they do not even see what they lack; or rather they could not even leave it, for they would sooner lose their health, and sooner lose their endurance of frost and the blaze of the sun. And as for living, no one has more than anyone else in this life. For the natural rests of lying down and sleep are common to all; common too are food and enjoyments, if one sets aside the difference wisely and tests the use by perception; common no less, exactly, are the pains of souls and bodies; and one might find more excess of these among those who seem to have more in life. Since this is how things truly are, where would the inequality of God’s governance be, when he has set variety, not inequality, in our affairs? For the variety of wisdom that shines out in the world is one thing, and disorder of governance another. If one found some men by nature free of passions, and others subject to passions in both soul and body; some without food and others needing food; or some incapable of evil and others capable; or again some mortal and others immortal, such a man might rightly charge the governance with disorder and inequality, as though God governed our affairs by some allotment rather than by reason. But if the manner of birth is the same for all, and the nurture of nature one and the same, the supply of necessities (without which it is impossible to subsist) common to all alike, and the end of all one and the same, the equality appearing in all things to the utmost exactness, then the one who slanders God’s providence as disorder is either wholly blind or looks at things with hostile eyes and is by no means to be believed just. For if difference means disorder, such a man slanders the order of variety, which so well befits an all-wise craftsman; let him go on to decry also the variety of colours and the difference of foods and drinks, which wonderfully refresh the senses of those who take them. From here the most wretched men set out toward fate, thinking to confirm the absurdity of inequality through the two principles; but it has been shown to sensible people that there is no inequality in our affairs.

And since they also assign wars to evil: how, by their account, can different fates apply when many thousands sometimes fall at one time, or rather in one hour? Does some single fate bind them together under itself? And how is it not altogether most ridiculous to suppose this? So the inequality of fate (the grievous disease of those who have gone astray) has no place in reality; wars take their beginning from greed, and have their working by God’s permission. Their occasion is evil (I mean the desire of greed), which has been shown above to be a wrong of men, not of God; but death is not an evil of nature. For birth and death have been laid down by God in nature, not so that those who die may perish, but so that those who are born may be added to those who exist. For it would not be the part of a good being to give existence and having come to be only to the men who exist, but also to prepare those who do not yet exist for those who exist; so that those who have come to be, having run the course of life sufficiently, may receive death as rest from their running (not leading them to destruction, but transferring them elsewhere according to the worth of each), and those who do not exist may receive entry into being. Death laid down in nature, then, is not evil, however it may come. Nor must we examine the different circumstances through which it comes, but recognize one manner common to all: that the soul does not depart from the body without some circumstance and necessity, but stays as long as its natural lodging remains undestroyed. With this natural and common thing goes a certain fear, which has necessarily been taken on as a suspicion of punishment; not in all, but in those whose mind is ready for sin, to overturn it. For the man who is wise according to virtue is freed both from wrongdoing and from thinking death wretched; but the lover of sin fears death from the same folly from which he does wrong. Yet such a consequence of folly is necessary, so that by fearing what is not to be feared he may escape the harm of what he truly ought to fear (I mean sin). When, then, sin abounds among nations, of which greed is one kind, they become the cause for themselves of what appears to be punishment, which in truth, as has been said, would not be punishment, since it is fixed by common nature for all. It benefits both those who fall in war and those who are saved: to the one it gives an end of sin, in the other it produces an example for fear. And it benefits even if righteous men perish along with the multitude: for as death is for the unjust the end of injustice, so for the righteous, as victors, it is in a way the beginning of crowns. So something wonderful happens through God’s all-wise providence: what seems to punish does good, and not through painful things that he himself directly brings about, but through things he permits to men who go over to them of their own accord. So war is not the work of God but a necessary permission: in appearance for the suspicion of punishment against sin, but in truth for its end; and there, even if a righteous man falls (though it is unlikely that a righteous man makes war), he is benefited the more. For it is greater than ceasing from evil to enjoy the fruits of the toils of virtue, which is the lot of the pious after death.

Those who fight against these points slander the part before refuting the evil of the whole. For if they bring wars upon us as coming from an existing evil and a beginningless principle, they ought to have decried death itself alone; for it is superfluous to examine the occasions while what necessarily happens remains unjudged. And how could they decry death, which (by the deceiver’s account) frees the soul from matter? So according to the common view death is by no means evil; for what necessarily happens to all is not evil. They slander it in vain because of wars, since it brings nothing more than what is laid up by nature. But if someone decries the occasion of wars itself, whether anger or enmity or greed, he would not miss what is fitting; but this must be reckoned to men, disposed in this way by the wickedness of their purpose. That death is by no means evil may best be shown thus. If it had not been appointed for all, the righteous man would be toiling for virtue for ever, gaining nothing more from his sweat, and the unjust man would live on immortal in the pleasures of his sins; and each would be quite absurd. But death checks the unjust pleasure of the wrongdoer and brings to rest the just toil of the one who does right. For since it is necessary for men to be able to sin, since this is the cause of being able to do right, and since the power given by God for the acquisition of the noble and good turns aside in most people toward the ease of sin, so that virtue, mixed with difficulty, is all the more admirable, death is useful to both, the righteous and the unjust, giving the one rest from toils and the other an end of sins. Since death, then, is found to be good (not only not evil), not according to the madman’s account, as freeing the soul from the matter that does not exist, but in the way we have said, why should we imagine a principle of evil for wars, and not simply blame the unjust purpose of those who wage them? For what results (which one might reckon to God’s providence) has been shown above to be just, not from war alone, but in every way and in general good by nature (not only not evil); so that war is to be blamed, not the death that results, which is laid down for our advantage, but the purpose of those who wage it (especially unjustly), for which he who provides for our affairs is not responsible.

Again, there is another kind of thing that the most grievously mad man blames: earthquakes, plagues, famines, crop failures, locusts and the like, as though this too came from the opposite principle. But it is plain to all that in great cheerfulness and prosperity nearly all men, with few exceptions, are commonly slack in mind, give way to their passions and keep no memory of virtue and of the toils of piety. And this happens, in a way, naturally. For when unmeasured fullness of food and drink comes to men through great abundance, as the belly is fattened, the mind is thickened, reason lies on its back, and the soul, weighed down, is subjected to irrational passions. But if one of the misfortunes listed should happen, men care less for the belly, serve pleasures less, pursue self-control and piety (as far as they can), and improve their ways, as far as possible, when pressed rather than when thriving. Which, then, shall we assign to evil, by his account? The things painful to the senses but very beneficial in their working? And which to the good? The things pleasant, but sometimes most harmful? And how will evil not seem to be a better tutor toward virtue than the good? For often those whom prosperity did not change for the better, some grief or misfortune that befell them has transformed. For men need such reminders at times, to rouse the mind and to be freed from too much ease. If one could see them, when prosperous, keeping at least from great wrongs and erring only moderately, there might be a reasonable attack on such things as happening without reason. But if they take the continual abundance of necessities as occasion for complete forgetfulness of the giver, it is necessary that they sometimes be roused by misfortunes to remember God, to whom we ought to confess unceasing thanks for his care for us. So God arranges such things to admonish men, not seized by any passion of anger, but intent on care and on the conversion of those who need it. For it would not belong to the highest and most exact love for mankind to coax human passions with kindness and let them grow by never rebuking them. On the contrary, that looks toward inhumanity, if, wishing not to depart from apparent kindness, he should treacherously allow men to fall wholly into the dissolution of evil. I say that he who gives good things also brings, of necessity, things thought painful. For a father who beats his erring son is not inhuman; on the contrary, if he did not lead him to conversion, he would not seem to show a father’s care. Nor is a physician who cuts and burns spreading sores inhuman; rather, the more he holds to the reason of his art, the more, sparing the patient, he applies the pain of the harsher remedies, since the patient would perish from his sores if he were not helped in this way, but will be saved if surgery and cautery are applied when needed. So, by this example, it is men who bring painful things upon themselves rather than God, preparing beforehand the need and the occasions by their own purpose, through their own passions. For as it is not the physician who makes the occasion and the need for cautery, but the sore beneath urges the physician on and calls for the cautery, so human passions call forth from God care in what serves their healing, since he by no means allows himself not to provide for men always, as his own work. For he has entrusted to men a free choice of virtue and nobility; yet he props up what is rotten in us toward the passions by the means through which he sometimes plainly admonishes and rebukes, neither bringing the harsher things continually, lest by the necessity of dejection he drive out freedom, nor leaving us wholly unchecked in the impulse to ease, lest he leave the hold of the passions incurable. Both he arranges with ineffable wisdom for men’s benefit, knowing the right time for each.

For example, you may see an earthquake, or a lack of rain, or an onset of locusts, and at the same time almost all men inclining toward reverence and toward supplication of him who can turn such things away. If, then, what usually seems pleasant and good makes human reason lie back, while painful things rouse it and turn it to a more pious state, how could one not say that God governs the former for the sake of bodies and the latter for the sake of souls? Are the things that rouse souls to piety and virtue, then, to be called evils? Even if they are painful to the senses of those who undergo them, they are brought on of necessity for men’s salvation.

But Mani, truly mad, fights against himself in every way without knowing it. For if the growth of matter is harmful, who would not see that the opposite of what he says happens? Matter will grow in men who prosper continually, have leisure for luxury and serve the belly and what comes after the belly; and it will be diminished most through famines, plagues and deaths, which do not allow it to advance toward the injustice of growth. So it would have been likely for him, by his own hypothesis, to call these things good rather than evil. And he would have seemed to reach a better account in this way, if he had not again ascribed pleasant things in his account to other, opposite principles and called them evil in turn. For both are good, being brought on by reason by the good God. But the man who rejoices in sin, to establish the evil he thinks exists, is grieved at God’s effective admonitions, through which men, often improved, and some wholly changed for the better, show the doctrine of his error to be incoherent.

Besides all this, if there were never any hindrance to the things God commonly gives to all men, men would ascribe their supply to the course of some unchangeable nature, and on receiving them they would not give thanks to the giver, nor would they ask when they did not have them. So they are sometimes deprived for a little while so that they may ask, and they receive again so that they may give thanks to the giver, knowing that it is he who provides, and not some other nature beside God, undiscerning and unchangeable, that supplies them. And God wishes men to be grateful to him so that they may become more worthy to receive what is from him, not so that he may gain anything for himself. He wishes them to ask for good things so that, on receiving them, they may be aware of the giver. For he rejoices to give what is his, but rejoices more to give to the worthy; since his love for mankind is in a way dishonoured if it is shown to the unperceiving, but proves very reasonable if those who receive value the giver above all in receiving.

And if cities fall when impiety springs up (as happened recently in the time of the man who was very impious and revived the error of idols), sin is destroyed and the error against God diminished; nothing more than natural death happens, and divine correction is by no means evil. On the contrary, it is good, like a kind of medicine; and the only evil is to decry the beneficial economy. For the man who slanders the begetting of children as increasing matter, and decries death in great numbers, would he seem to have a human mind, imagining things so contrary to himself? But neither is the begetting of children evil, which makes the mortal race ever-living and adds those born to creation; nor is death (even if much of it comes at once) wicked, since it was not laid down by God for men’s loss but appointed for the highest benefit of righteous and unrighteous alike. What happens naturally to each individually, if it comes upon many at once, comes according to nature and nothing more; but it shows the care of the one who arranges it to be greater than in the individual case, in that the one has no sign of the condemnation of sinners, while the other, by apparent indignation, benefits those who die in the manner described earlier, and turns back the living,

And if someone, since such things often happen, points out that human life is entangled in the same wrongs, such a man seems to me to be in the same case as one who, seeing fish in lakes and the sea, thinks the fisherman’s art is idle, because he does not see those that are caught but sees those swimming in the waters; or as one who, seeing many sick, should think that medicine does nothing. For while many are benefited toward piety and virtue by the means through which God sometimes arranges fearful things, the fault-finder denies what is achieved and reproaches the contentiousness of the many toward sin. Yet we ourselves do not say that such things compel the many, but that they turn the well-disposed away from sinning. Indeed, brought on for a little while, they quickly cease, so as not to force rather than persuade to change; and then the usual things return, producing an approved purpose in those who change, so that the well-disposed may have even the mere memory of the examples as a prop for their weakness. Rather, we must say: if, even when such things happen, those who change are few and easily counted, how far would human reasoning not have advanced in wickedness if the deterrence through such things did not come? And even if no one were benefited from it (which is foolish to say), it is better that men be convicted as not yielding even in this way than that God bear the blame of neglect as no longer using correction; and this argument is to be used against those who do not perceive. For it is plain to the well-disposed that fear not only leads some to the completion of change for the better, but also secretly lessens in others the impulse and daring toward injustice.

Let us come now to the discussion of creation, which the deceiver slanders, and let us first examine darkness and night, which he decries most of all, darkened as he is in mind. For he takes the darkness that appears at night as evidence of that darkness which Mani imagines exists, as of something that does not exist, seeing and understanding nothing at all, but stumbling against things like a blind man. And he calls it darkness and, as it were, shudders, as though needing no argument to prove his false account, taking the name as of a thing proclaimed by its very self.

We must say, then, that this darkness is indeed called so, but does not exist in substance; it comes and goes daily, existing as a consequence and in the manner of a shadow. It was not created to exist as a substance at all, but when the world was created it is a shadow. A man is born by himself, and the shadow accompanies him according to the bulk of his body; and it would surely not seem to have been made along with him in himself, but it comes about according to the position of the body and the circuit of the light. So too night and darkness (the world being plainly bodily) are only a consequence, not made as something substantial in the manner of a created thing. For when the sun completes its daily course and turns to its own withdrawals, all things inside the world are necessarily shadowed, since what gives light is outside; for so God willed it, for reasons we shall state a little later as far as we can. Indeed, by day too the bodily masses that stand up send their shadows toward the side opposite the position of the light, and the shadow moves round with the light to the opposite side. Where the sun is until noon, there is shadow after noon; and where the shadow is before noon, there the sun comes after it. And the shadow by day is a shadow and not wholly darkness, since the surrounding air, open on every side, gives a share of brightness to the shaded places too. If you shut up a house completely, leaving not even a narrow entrance for the light, you will make night even at noon. This happens at night, when the sun has gone to its own regions; so night would be a privation of light. One would learn what happens more clearly by considering that at night the sun is somewhere, remaining and existing, but by day darkness is nowhere, but is wholly dissolved and vanishes; so light has come into being as a substance, but darkness not at all.

But let us consider how necessary night is. It is first a rest common to all. For sleep by day shows the necessity of night all the more, since night, long as it is, is not enough to rest the senses of men. And not all share equally in sleep by day; but at night the measure of rest is common and equal for all, with no unevenness according to the advantages of life; which bears witness no less to the Creator’s equality toward mankind as one race.

Then, if it were always day, with an uninterrupted stretch, time would not have been measured, not being divided into parts; but the daily division of time makes it possible to count it by these portions, and without the recognition of time the life of most men would have become irrational. And what is more, there would have been no enjoyment of light, if the darkness of night were not beside it in the way described. For uninterrupted bodily light would not even have been known to be light; for light is named and is in contrast to darkness. So there would have been nothing wonderful in its appearing as a created thing, if the position of what seems opposed did not show it. So we must give thanks to the all-wise Creator for many other things in the matter of night, but most of all because it produces the perception and enjoyment of light, which would not otherwise have been recognized for what it is.

But one might be struck by the ineffable wisdom of God: though so many and still more necessary and useful things come to men through darkness, yet, since there was both a name and a thing called darkness, he did not make it in substance, but made it come and go, so that as existing it might provide what has been said and still more, and as not existing it might not at all bring blame on the Creator. Night, therefore, is blameless, and indeed wonderful in its use in every way.

They say that the robber does his evil at night. And what has that to do with night? If it were not possible for those who wish to do evil also by day, the time of night would have to be blamed; but since the doer waits for the opportunity of evildoing, whether it falls by day or by night, it is the purpose of the doer, not the time, that must be blamed. Besides, if he obeyed the night, every evildoer would have been asleep; for that is all it urges.

We must observe, besides, that light and darkness, truth and falsehood, seem to be opposed to each other in proportion. For what light is to the body, truth is to the soul; and what darkness is to the eyes, ignorance and falsehood are to the mind. For man is nothing else than soul and body, and having from God provision for each, he enjoys bodily light through the body and intelligible truth through the soul. And as darkness does not exist in substance but is only permitted to come on, as has been shown, in the same way falsehood is not carried from some existing substance, which that man calls an unbegotten principle, nor is it a substance existing and living; it is permitted to exist only in thought, coming and going like darkness, and this very usefully and necessarily. For if the thought of falsehood had not been permitted, men’s choice of truth would have been untested and unproved, and it would have been named in vain if falsehood had not been permitted to thought. For no one would be a lover of truth unless he also had in his own power the thought of lying. I do not say that falsehood would be a favour to truth, but that the choice of truth would not seem to exist if the power of lying were not at hand; and this is for the sake of lovers of truth, not for the sake of truth. For the one who speaks truth must have it in his power, and it must be possible for him, to lie, and by keeping from it he speaks truth. So the possibility of lying brings men to prefer truth, as the presence of darkness stirs the perception of light. And as light shines in the darkness (for when it comes it dissolves it, since it does not exist in substance), so truth, prevailing over falsehood, wholly shows it to be non-existent, slipping in through thought by the power of reason, so that truth may be chosen. For how could anyone choose truth if he did not also have in his own power the choice of its opposite?

If, then, it could be shown that darkness exists in substance, and does not only come and go as has been said, a substance of falsehood might be posited too. But if neither he nor anyone else can show that this darkness is not dissoluble, coming about in the manner of a shadow, so that light exists even at night while darkness does not exist by day, then plainly falsehood, which corresponds to it, does not exist in the manner of a substance either, but has of necessity only been permitted to arise in thought, for the choice of truth. And since light exists in substance, one might clearly think that truth too exists in substance, so that the exactness of the proportion may be kept. And what prevents us from holding and thinking that God is truth itself? For if God is light (light for the mind, for he is not visible), plainly the light is truth; for intellectual light is nothing else than truth. Yet God, being light and truth itself, keeps from falsehood not through inability but because he does not wish ever to lie. And if we say he cannot (for it is not absurd to say it), it is because there is never a time when he does not not-will it. For in those in whom willing and not willing come about in different ways, ability too is reasonably defined; but to God, since willing it never comes about, inability must be ascribed, yet so, because he never wills it, not because he cannot, in the manner of weakness and inability. For it is not unreasonable to say that a created thing (I mean bodily light) is fettered by nature, so that being light is not in its own power but in that of its maker; but it is very absurd to think the Creator subject to the necessity of nature, so that speaking truth seems not to be in his power but forced on him by nature. Yet what he is, he alone is; and in those he created he has placed being what they are by nature and necessity, but no one has placed in him being truth by necessity. So he who made natures is above nature, and he himself is free of the necessity of nature; for so he will be confessed to be truly good. So, from what has been said, there is no falsehood itself, but the liar is the one who lies; for the name comes from the one who pursues it, not the pursuer from what does not exist. For falsehood would not exist before the one who thinks it up; and similarly darkness was not created but comes in, being the shadow of this universe; except that darkness is not only permitted to steal in but is also very useful, while the thought of falsehood makes plain men’s choice of truth, yet, when preferred to truth, is most harmful. And very naturally so: for falsehood is thought up by men, while bodily darkness is laid down by God. That is why we must, with understanding, flee the one, and not revile the other, which has been laid down of necessity by the Creator.

The inventor of the emptiest blasphemy against God reviles not only this, but also the animals that have received a wild nature from the Creator, plainly moving against created things like an enemy who finds fault with everything … and the discourse will refute the deceiver’s irrational blasphemy in these things too. For in decrying all wild beasts, four-footed and creeping, he seems to me to be in the same case as a sinful and very wicked slave who accepts his master’s other things as blameless, but hates and slanders a whip that is merely seen somewhere, showing by his very hatred that what lies at hand is necessary. For men, being ready to forget God, if they had nothing in creation that appeared worthy of fear, would have separated themselves still more from God by their purpose, and would not be reasonably blamed, since they were roused by nothing they saw. For even if we have by nature freedom to choose the better, yet through ease we easily fall into forgetfulness. So there are necessarily many things that rouse our reasoning by fear toward God, as again there are very many that move it, by kindness and the enjoyment of good things, to confess thanks to the Creator. For we are trained by both: by those we enjoy as pleasant and by those through which we are turned back as fearful.

What is wild by nature, then, is fearful, not wicked. For wickedness and evil are a passion of reasoning, while a natural impulse so constituted is free of all blame. And God, sparing men, has made it so that by fear of irrational animals we may pursue the rational quality of nobility. And there is nothing evil in these. For how can that be evil which does not know what it is? And in this way too the madman’s account of evil itself (which he invented and calls an unbegotten principle) is refuted no less. For he does not grant it reasoning and knowledge of evil, lest it be found to have perception of the good as well; for in this way it would be shown not to be evil, since knowledge of the good is testimony to a nature that is not evil. But in defining it as irrational and void of knowledge, he takes from it even the knowledge of what it itself is. For if it perceived and knew that it was evil, it would certainly perceive its opposite, being made good. For evil is detected by reason through the perception and comparison of the good, so that, if the opposite is plain, it will be evident. For every opposite is the test of its opposite, by knowledge and judgement; without knowledge neither is plain to the other. If, then, evil does not know itself and does not pursue evil by reasoning, it would not be evil, and would be accused in vain. He admits that evil is freed from reasoning. For example, all of us are accustomed to pardon a man in delirium, in the grip of fevers or some other affliction, who does not know what he does; rather we bend to pity, freeing from evil the man who strikes out wildly, and even, if he finds a sword, the man who kills. So it is evident to all, and this is a common judgement and consequence of nature, not to call evil what does not know what it does. If, then, neither what knows must be called good, nor what does not know what it itself is would seem to be evil (the first because he himself does not posit it, the second because he defines it so in error and outside the common view)…

So no wild beast is evil, being deprived of reason; but a man of bad character would be evil, pursuing by reason what he by no means ignores. For the addition of reason to nature brings the charge of evil, making beforehand plain what is being done; and the removal of knowledge is the removal of blame. So man, knowing both virtue and vice, is named from whichever he chooses (for knowledge comes before choice); but before he knows, being an infant, he is called by neither extreme. It is plain from every side, then, that we reckon vice and virtue by reasoning and by the choice that follows knowledge. Wild beasts, then, which have no share in reason, would not be evil, nor brought forth from evil; since, even if evil were so, it would not be evil,

Besides, you may often see even the most grievous thing in creeping creatures, I mean their venom, taken by the most exact physicians for healing, and, mixed with substances able to counter it, sometimes purging the most grievous diseases; and their very flesh, combined with other kinds and herbs, makes an excellent medicine for bodies; and likewise with the other wild beasts. For certain parts and members and blood often benefit the sick by themselves. How, then, do things that are partly beneficial come from evil? All these things, therefore, are to be thought useful only because of men, and called neither good nor evil, since they necessarily produce in men only fear, for turning to the better; and their idleness hinders idleness among men. For they are placed like a whip seen in a house, to produce caution in the servants, if anyone should be idle or do wrong in the household.

And if one can see wicked men unharmed by these, wonder at the master’s forbearance, but no less consider the whip that lies at hand. And on the contrary, if good men fall in with them, we must know that the master would rather spare, for conversion, a good man who has erred than one wholly given up; for the one errs curably, while the other is kept for incurable punishment. Very many such examples we can see recorded in the divine Scriptures. God, then, cares greatly for man; that is why he has set beside him in every way things that stir him to reverence, so that not even his sleep is free of frequent disturbance, but even this, hindered by certain vermin, pricks the reason like a goad. And many things help human weakness wonderfully toward remembering God. For by what he suffers bodily he is freed from passions of the soul; and by what he could suffer, even if he does not, he is turned to reverence. And man necessarily falls into bodily sufferings so that he may escape the most grievous and only true suffering, sin. For what feels no pain is unrestrained, and what sins unpunished is wholly destroyed. For if, with so many things set before them for fear, men are mostly sick with fearlessness, how could they even have lived with one another if no fear hung before their eyes? So sickness softens a harder mind; a shipwreck has often changed the perjured ways of merchants; poverty in turn has brought down the man lifted up by wealth; loss of children has chastened the man who was greedy for his children’s sake; and if it did not chasten him, it gave an example to those who perceive. And the children were not harmed at all, but rather benefited, being freed from the upbringing of bad parents, and the greed is exposed. Again, when other parents are well disposed, their sons die either because they would become unworthy of those who begot them, so that they may not stand as a bad monument to good parents, or, being good, because if they grew up further they would change and become bad; they are benefited by not remaining to their own harm, since God governs all things by his foreknowledge.

And fears are very necessary, and their causes, which God arranges, are varied and countless in number. And the same things often happen for various reasons. One man is ill, being turned back from his sins; another is exercised still more, for his virtue, toward bearing witness; another is convicted for the excess of his evil. And of the same misfortune the causes vary. One man loses his wealth for not using it well; another, because he used it well, by God’s sparing; another being trained in virtue through poverty; another willingly throws off the weight of his money so as not to be hindered toward virtue. And one could not easily see in detail the exactness of what God arranges in sparing men; but the few things that are grasped become grounds of faith for those not grasped. Some things he himself makes clear to men, so that they may have, as it were, an ascent to him through what they perceive; but most he hides in obscurity, so as not to become the teacher of unbelief toward himself. For it is not fitting to demand of God a demonstration of each thing that happens; since such knowledge becomes worse than ignorance, the mind being put to shame by what it learns, and otherwise not accepting as a just economy anything God governs. Better is faith and disposition toward God, trusting the uprightness of the governor even without seeing the meaning of what is done; since to be brought over everywhere by demonstrations would be plain unbelief rather than faith. Many do not even scrutinize genuine friends, granting genuineness to the unexamined character of their company, since they would easily be accused of distrust if, after testing, they never gave them confidence. So God too, wishing most of all that we be disposed toward him, does not make clear the whole working of his providence (for he wishes us to trust him), nor does he hide it all, but by some examples he in a way props up our mind. The well-disposed in purpose and most pious, then, both perceive and keep the memory for ever, flowering toward what is good like good soil that has received seeds. But those whose mind is buried under the greater weight of the habit of sins, or under the prejudice of other fictions against God (such as Mani brought forth, and such as one could find among others), are struck in mind, but repel the perception and benefit of the examples. Let this be added concerning the general providence of the God of all.

What we were examining was about all wild beasts, and it was shown by natural reasoning that these are neither evil nor from any evil, but very useful to men for producing fear. For if everything in creation were only pleasant and full of cheerfulness, and there were nothing at all that frightened even gently, men would have seemed to be badly trained toward fearlessness. And these things also have the beauty of variety, and a comeliness mixed with what is fearful. Besides these, there are others that are neither fit to feed men nor provide clothing, nor are they beastly and wild, but only fill out the variety of the world. And plainly all, tame and wild and those in between, remain subject to the creation and will of one, escaping mutual destruction and secured by various advantages. Some have invincible strength; the weaker gain their safety by the speed of their nature; others are armed in other ways; and those that seem unarmed have their safety contrived in some other manner: either they have the nature of birds or hide under the earth. So the Creator has provided order by variety, and by setting up differences distributes safety to all, so that no kind of them may perish, betrayed by weakness of nature. So too they are clothed for the seasons with coverings that grow of themselves, thick hair and tough hides, able to ward off the harm of winter and heat, and making lying down and rest on the ground easier, so that a natural bedding seems to be spread beneath them. And some are given few offspring, either as hard to catch or as long-lived, while those easily caught and given over to daily use last and are preserved by many offspring. They have different foods at different times, and abundant supply lies before all. So too not one of the herbs thought deadly has been made destructive by nature. For how could what is harmful to one kind and beneficial to another be both destructive and saving in its nature? The difference of the kinds that use them requires the variety of provision among them, so that even in irrational creatures a trace of reason may be shown by the law of the Creator. For none of them is ignorant of what is proper to it, nor, through its irrational and beastly nature, does it take what is deadly to itself as food; but each sets out for what is beneficial to it. For if every herb and root were suitable for all, the Creator’s law ruling even in irrational creatures would have been shown less. But that what is harmful to some lies by as saving to others proclaims more clearly the wisdom in all things: that even in irrational creatures there is a natural discernment of what lies at hand for food. If this were not naturally present in each, one might reasonably accuse harmful things of having been brought forth from evil. But if natural discernment in animals comes before judgement, and each chooses what is proper to it, plainly every herb and root is useful (even if not to all), and the things laid out in various ways are various.

In this way, then, we must also dispose of the madman’s accusation against so-called deadly herbs, since he has been eager to slander everything. So too he speaks falsely of iron and fire, doing the opposite of what he wishes in these too. For while accusing matter (which he vainly imagines exists), he again appears as a kind of patron and advocate of it, showing hostility to the things that consume matter as evil. Iron and fire were sown in the earth by the Creator, and found by man’s reasoning with God’s permission; without them human life would have been wholly maimed. If the madman thought them harmful because they destroy the bodies put to them, they will appear much more beneficial and saving by their necessary use for everything. And if they lay hidden in creation and man’s reasoning first found them, to whom must the reasoning that found them be credited? To evil and matter, which have no knowledge, by his account, or to the good? But plainly wisdom of reasoning is a good and a gift of the good. And when did iron ever leap of its own accord at anyone, iron which is subject only to the use of reason and serves every art? “But a man murders with it,” he says. Yet the evil art belongs to the user, not the tool; so that, if there were no one using it in this way, iron would not have seemed evil. For if the murderer plans to commit murder but fails in the deed, is it not plain that his purpose did the deed and the iron is sinless? So too, even if he does it, iron is not the cause, but the one who used iron’s cutting against reason. And if he strikes with wood, or beats with a stone, or strangles with his own hands, he will call these evil too. And with the madman everything is a cause rather than the true cause, voluntary reasoning. For all the things mentioned along with iron are neither good nor evil, but are drawn to whatever the user wishes, lying at hand like tools and serving the user; and if they had not been given to man, he would not have accomplished the arts as he has, nor had their abundant uses; and, what is more, he would hardly have been exercised in virtue. For not having tools at hand that could be drawn to the working of virtue and vice, he would not have had in his power the preference of virtue, so that he would seem to have suffered the greatest loss and to have fallen from the greatest good repute, if he were thought not to touch evildoing only because he lacked the means to do it. For what is wholly inactive is idle and without glory. “But look,” he might say, “at what results.” Nothing more than what is necessary happens. For death was not found by the murderer but laid down by the Creator; and if anyone is eager to prove iron and wood and stone, fire and water and the like to be evildoers, let him leave aside the tools and refute only the result (I mean death), and show that it was not reasonably appointed by the Creator, and so at last call evil the things that wrongly help to bring it about. But if death is shown by no one to be wicked, but on the contrary (as has been shown in many ways) is even beneficial, how is it not superfluous to accuse as evil by nature the things through which death may come, which do not know to what end they are moved by another to whom they were given, and are free of all blame, when one ought to blame only the one who moves them when it is not fitting, man?

So it has truly been shown that nothing in creation is evil, and that only human reasoning, which necessarily receives power, sometimes does wrong, and in doing wrong is only convicted of having preferred the worse; but that it can make nothing new against nature, nor turn things upside down at its pleasure, but only does what is according to nature, even if it is accused of acting against reason. For example, murder brings about natural death, doing nothing more than what is natural, except that it convicts the doer. Again, adultery and the like are accused only for the unreasonableness of the reasoning, but can make nothing at all new against the nature fixed by the Creator; so that the law of him who made nature is and remains inviolable, and sins turn somehow within natural things themselves, introducing no novelty, except that they convict the doer of doing wrong willingly, since he could not otherwise have done right had he not also had the opposite in his power, the willing avoidance of which he has for the acquisition of virtue. So it is the work of the utmost folly to blame iron or wood or any other thing in vain, and not the one who uses it unreasonably.

And if someone asks why a man is murdered, we shall say again what has often been said: why, then, does man die at all? If this were shown to be evil, the blame would reasonably go back to the one who appointed it. But if death is not evil, we must examine only the permission of him who provides for our affairs, for what reason a man meets, by way of murder, a death that is not evil by nature; and it would be found to happen for many and various reasons, which it would be superfluous to count. For the same thing happens to the righteous and the unrighteous for different reasons, neither to harm the righteous nor to punish the unrighteous; for what is natural would not be a punishment, but serves as an example or for chastening incurable evils. And there are many reasons why God permits a man to be murdered; yet plainly nothing happens beyond what is fixed for nature. For even if the circumstance differs, fever and unmeasured fullness or on the contrary famine, cold and heat, being buried or stoned, sword and fire and water, in all these the outcome is one. And what is that? What was well and fittingly appointed by the Creator for the whole race.

So it could be shown in many other ways too that nothing in creation is evil, and nothing in the divine economy deserves blame, but that all things have come to be by ineffable wisdom and are governed by ineffable providence; so that it would not be easy to learn the meaning of what God does, whether things that seem good or, again, painful. For it was not fitting, it seems, that the evidences of God’s wisdom should be accessible to all, and his ineffable and incomprehensible mind wholly bare to men, when even a human king and ruler sometimes keeps most of his plans hidden, so that even what is done is unclear as to the reason for which it is done. It is no wonder, then, if men cannot contain the reason of God’s whole governance; it befits them to submit without meddling, to keep quiet, and by no means to rise up against the ineffable governance. For often we do not even scrutinize a craftsman experienced in building, shipbuilding or bronze-working, but, respecting him as he does his own work, trusting his experience we wait to see the work; and sometimes we do not even notice when craftsmen make mistakes. What, then, shall we say of the wisdom of God that surpasses every mind, which we ought to be amazed at and honour, whether we understand or not?

But if anyone, because he does not grasp the reason of most of what God does, should fall into absurd opinions against God, such a man is most wretched and very foolish, using the very blindness of his own mind as his guide; like Mani, who devised a most grievous madness against those who believe him: since he did not grasp how our affairs are governed, he fabricated a second, beginningless principle of evil, so that he might go wrong about things above and not be allowed to understand things below, fabricating against the God of all such things as proclaim his supreme forbearance. For he divided up what is God’s and ascribed most of it to the evil that does not exist, blaspheming the Creator in every way by saying that God’s achievements are composed out of evil.

What, then, would he say about the principles of bodies? These are four, which they usually call the four elements; they are opposite to one another and exactly opposed, and none of them can accomplish anything by itself. For what would the dry be without the moist, or the hot without the cold? If, then, the meeting of opposites makes a body, which of the four will he assign to evil, and which to the good? For if he imagines in everything a mixture of good and evil, he must divide the four into two, and either separate them equally or set three against one; but whatever he assigns to the good would be found able to do harm by itself. For none of the four, unmixed, is not dangerous; indeed, even in the mixture, the one in excess becomes a cause of destruction to the body, as those skilled in these things say. If, then, the hot burns by itself, the cold chills, the dry dries and the moist floods, which of these will the deceiver reckon to God? For it is reasonable that the whole body should have a mixture of the things of which it is composed and by which it subsists; but that each of the things from which the mixture comes should itself be from a mixture is impossible. So there is no reason to divide each of the indivisible elements themselves between two opposite principles and to introduce a mixture of each. For what composition will the deceiver devise for the dry? What mixture for unmixed fire? Or what combination for the cold, which is cold throughout? And likewise for the moist. For these are plainly of one kind and indivisible, so that none of them could even subsist by itself, but has its being together with the others.

He is mad with a grievous madness, then, when he says that one part of fire belongs to the good and another to evil. And he must do this with the qualities of the elements too, and divide what admits no division. For the dry is dry throughout, dryness itself, simple and of one kind; and the cold cannot even come into the thought of division, being one and simple throughout. So too the moist and the hot. What part of fire, then, will belong to the good, and what, on the contrary, to evil, when it admits no division, since it admitted no mixture either, being unmixed? For a single body can be divided, at least in thought, but how could an unmixed element seem to be composed of opposites? And what opposition could one reckon in unmixed fire? If, then, each element by itself is wholly dangerous, none of them, by the madman’s account, will suit the good; all will be assigned to evil, and bodies will not be composed of the other, contrary to the madman’s hypothesis.

And how will one part of fire seem to him healing (in so far as it belongs to the good) and another destructive and burning (in so far as it belongs to evil), unless he madly imagined a mixture of good and evil in bodies too? Thinking this, he will be compelled to assign to the good whichever of the four elements he likes, entire and undivided, as they are by nature, and he will be seen admitting that something unmixed and harmful by itself exists even from God. But the fool divides the indivisible nature of fire, saying that its healing part is one thing and its burning part another, the barbarian not understanding that the division lies in the use, not in the nature of fire. For unmeasured nearness to it is dangerous, while a moderate distance gives a safe share in it; and besides, the very burning quality of fire is alone what is necessary, and that is what fire is. For this softens and melts what is brought to it for need; so fire is nothing else than its burning quality, and what is necessary is nothing else than this. But he insults fire in vain, being very ungrateful for the benefits of the Creator of all.

And if someone should grant that the four elements belong to evil, as he holds, how could they seem to be of one nature, being opposites? For if the hot comes from one place and the cold from another, or the reverse, and so again with the other pair, the mixture of bodies would be incoherent on such a hypothesis. And if he should ascribe to the ingenuity of evil the discovery of the four for the making of the world, evil, which has no mind or understanding, will turn out very wise indeed, so as to carry off even the Creator’s greatest wonder, if it understood how it could make them subsist.

And since he reveres the sun and defines it as unmixed (as he supposes) with evil, come, let us consider the sun truthfully too. It will be seen to belong to one of the four elements, I mean the hot substance. It does not harm things beneath it, but only warms and benefits them because it is very far away; but those it comes nearer to it burns, and makes such land barren. Indeed, in summer, falling unmixed on the earth at noon, it heats it so that the ground seems to those who walk on it barefoot to be laid under them like a branding iron. And often men caught in the sun’s blaze have perished in the great heat, finding no relief nearby. It blackens bodies and scorches them, plainly doing the work of fire. Or rather it is itself productive of fire, if one holds water in a glass vessel directly toward it. For the point of the sun’s ray, gathered by the transparency of the water and the glass and sent into a narrow space, meeting with matter easily catches fire, and at once begets fire and clearly persuades anyone unwilling to quarrel that the sun is a kind of fire, and the first of the bright works of creation, since the nature of fire would be found brighter than all things. For while all the other elements are carried downward, fire alone leaps upon what can be burned and takes its course upward through everything, lightened by its fineness, and proves even the air very heavy by rising above it, so that it appears finer than the air too, by kinship with the sun. So Mani, deifying the sun as of the nature of the good, runs the risk of introducing a good one like fire, or rather plainly such. For the sun, being of the hot substance, differs from fire in position but does the same in its working, except that the measure of its distance removes what lies near it from its sharper onset. Indeed, it would have been thought dangerous to all animals and plants if the Creator had not made along with it other things for help, through which we and the other animals are safe from the sun. These are retreats and shelters, and also, for plants, supplies of water and blowings of winds. So even those who define the sun as a fifth element, being unwilling to quarrel against what is plain, … And so let the most grievously mad man, who blasphemes the Creator of all, by no means be believed when he compares the sun with God and says it is from God’s substance. For everything visible (being a body) is by nature opposed to the invisible and incorporeal; it can be his work, and a very wonderful work, but it can have no likeness of nature to him.

To count all the impious things the deceiver has put into his writings would be a great task. For reviling all existing things as evil, he also slanders the fruits of the earth as nourishing matter. And while he admires the sun beyond measure and defines it as being from the good, as he says, he is not ashamed to decry bitterly the plants and seeds it nourishes by warming them, which could not exist at all without the sun, which was made by God. For as the sun would have been of no benefit unless supplies of rain watered the plants and blowings of useful winds stirred them, so again rain and the rest would have been of no benefit without the sun. So here too he fights hard against himself, bitterly slandering as evil the fruits of the earth, which grow through the sun that he greatly admires and honours.

And saying that rains are excretions, and defining them as the sweat of the rulers of matter as they are in love with the powers of the good and so toil, he tries to show their superfluity and waste (as he thinks) from the fact that rain falls on the sea and on the desert and unsown land; like some exact accountant come forward against God, as though God spent his supply of water in vain and wastefully, not seeing, through utter folly, what befits God: that if God were poor in water, he would make an exact distribution of it, measured to need; but since he is rich (more than anyone could say), this very abundance of supply is shown by his watering through clouds even the sea, from which the waters are carried up into the air. And the desert and unsown land are necessarily rained on to supply springs, and sometimes for travellers too, so that they may find gatherings of water. And in general he has not laid down that land without rain should be scorched by the sun, at least for the most part; for all land enjoys moisture from God either through rivers or through rains. So if it does not rain, the man and his followers are ready for blasphemy; and if it rains, they do not stop blaming and slandering God in vain. And when they take bread into their hands, the disciples of blasphemy first curse it, and so the ungrateful fill themselves; and enjoying creation no less than anyone, they alone have sharpened their tongues against it, or rather against him who made it, and they partake of it as God’s bitterest enemies, being vexed at this very thing, that they stand in need of the things of creation. And insulting the begetting of children, they [want] their intercourse to happen without it …, being slaves not of the necessary succession laid down by God but of pleasure, enemies in everything of true and genuine virtue and of piety, as though finding fault with the perpetuity of the human race and wishing the course of nature to stop somewhere, laying down laws for God and vexed at his goodness, because of which he bears their blasphemy with forbearance. Yet it is for this reason that a natural desire for intercourse has been instilled in bodies, so that animals are carried almost by necessity of the motions of nature to the work of succession, by the surpassing wisdom of the Creator, who laid this down too. For since labour pains are grievous for women, and the upbringing of children grievous for men and women, and succession very necessary, desire is moved naturally and in a way compels, while reason piously accepts that succession be made more important than pleasure. And pleasure is blameless in bodies, if it follows reason and the law of the Maker. But they, often reaping the pleasure, necessarily hate the work that comes from it, and give the instruction to loosen and cast out conceptions by sorceries brought in, and not to wait for births in due season, as though this alone were terrible and grievous, roused as enemies of nature, or rather of him who made it, and having learned madness against this universe.

“And why,” they say, “is there desire for intercourse in bodies?” How would the beauty of particular self-control have existed among men, unless there were by nature something that provokes, held in check by reason? And where would virginity be among women, or abstaining from marriage among men, surpassing common self-control, unless reason also had a love for holiness? Wrestling against natural things, it will make victors of those who rightly constrain their innate desire, not to insult nature, but for the practice of endurance and holiness.

So too we take pleasure in food and drink, reaping a pleasure that is not blameworthy (for it too is natural), and yet we train ourselves by fasts, not practising against nature what is above nature, but embracing endurance and propitiating God through humility. And we would not have taken up the practice of fasting if hunger were not present in the body. Everywhere, then, appetite procures good repute both for moderate use and for abstinence as far as one can. For it is not the use of natural things that makes sin. A moderate amount of wine is healthful, but the evil of drunkenness comes in through excess. Likewise the use of natural food in measure is blameless, while gluttony is convicted as unreasonable by its excess. So too with the appetite for intercourse: its lawful use, which knows measure, is wholly blameless, while the lawless and unmeasured use brings the charge of licentiousness.

So, since neither Mani nor his followers have seen anything by reason, they have carried everything off and insulted it madly, as though all desire were evil; whereas its measure, lawfully kept, is blameless, and abstinence as far as one can is the good repute of a wonderful virtue. For if someone who abstains is praiseworthy before God, that thing does not lie badly within his power, the abstinence from which is the achievement of perfect virtue; for it would be a loss if the highest good were not at hand, to be shown not empty through abstinence. For without not doing the opposite, when it is possible to do evil, one cannot seem to have done the opposite, the good, as we have often shown.

But Mani dishonours the good and virtue by decrying power and freedom. And he is not ashamed to say that stones have souls and to introduce all things as ensouled (even things plainly soulless), on the ground that the power of the good is still held captive even in stones; so far does he bring down what they honour into insult and cheapness that he says the nature of the good is fettered even in soulless stones. What madness could one say it is evidence of, to insist that these things are so? For if what was sent from the good is held captive even in stones, evil has already conquered, since on the contrary the one who came to bind has been bound. And he makes the noise in the air of a stone and a rod evidence that stones and wood have souls, as though he had ever heard articulate speech from them. Yet in us too the thought and reasoning of the soul are not heard at all, while what is audible comes from air struck through the bodily organ; which happens even without rational movement. One can find it in irrational creatures, which cry out but inarticulately, since they lack reason. So every body, even if soulless, naturally makes a sound by striking the air; for the incorporeal could not utter anything audible, since it does not strike the air, having no organ to strike it; otherwise the incorporeal powers would seem soulless, since nothing audible comes to us from them. So what he should have taken as evidence of things wholly soulless, since they necessarily make noise against the air (for this belongs to body alone, not to soul), he took as a sign of having a soul.

Hence he also gravely blames those who slaughter the four-footed animals and birds that are useful to men for food, on the ground that that power of the good gives these too their souls and is held captive in them, as though he were eager to insult in every way the one he supposedly calls good. We must ask, then: by whose permission were these given to men for food from the beginning? By evil, as insulting the good? But evil, having no knowledge, would not have understood so great a matter. For there would be no other creator, nor is there, as he says, but God, who also emitted the power from his own nature to chasten matter. All animals, then, came into being by the will of their Creator, both those suitable for men’s food and those not. So no one else but the Maker allowed these to be food for men. For nature as a whole would not have recognized what is useful to it if the one who made it had not so legislated. Indeed these have been made by nature a wealth, so that their use never fails; and the more some are consumed in use, the more prolific they are. Some only feed men, some also clothe them, and others provide other uses, made by the Creator by nature as servants for man. So even those great in bulk are subject to him, yielding gently; those in the air are brought down by the skill of reason; those in the waters are drawn up; and especially those that fulfil what is useful to men. So it is plain that men did not force irrational animals to serve them against the will of the Creator, but the law of their Maker subjected them to men.

Mani might say that it is not even pious to yoke an ox to plough the land, lest the soul sent by the good should seem to be utterly enslaved. And how could farming exist? How could the human race continue from generation to generation? So, against common reasoning, the man mad in every way fabricated everything against creation. For tame animals have been made by nature servants of man and given over to his use; and the untamed too are servants in another sense, besides the reason stated, so that man by reason prevails over all irrational creatures. And when God permits it for various reasons, not only might a lion, the most valiant beast, or some other wild beast or creeping thing overpower a man, but even a gnat or some other very small creature might get the better of him. Besides, the nature of wild beasts, in the way described, is set before the eyes of men (and sometimes into their experience) for various necessary reasons

But since it would seem drivel to speak and reply to each thing he prattles and fabricates, the one who has understanding must consider, even without argument, how all things have been fitted together by one reason, how one law of the Creator rules over all, and how nothing among existing things is at war, nor does any sign of war or discord appear in created things; rather they are at peace, since God weaves all things together with one another, as having received from one the watchword of peace and quiet, from whom also their being came at the beginning. For heaven breathes together with the things on earth, raining when the season requires, and again holding back the rain when plants must be brought to maturity by heat alone. And the sun, moving by its Maker’s law, produces the seasons, never interchanging them, but showing their one order inviolable. And the difference remains in nature, while one and the same harmony of things above and below appears with exactness. Night has remained without quarrel with day through the whole age, having its succession to the day not by irrational impulse but by the wisdom of the Creator, measured by additions and subtractions, and not even by these now one way and now another, but the time of addition and the time of subtraction are plain. And again the sun is not burdened by the succession of night, nor does it think its Creator’s law an insult; but like a good servant, having finished the course of the day without pausing for breath, it withdraws where its law directs, hiding itself in haste, so that the night may receive its own measure. What could you say of earth and sea, how each of them is bounded by a limit? One can see the sea curved by its waves but hindered by law from its onset, and driven against the land by violent winds but bent back by fear of the law; yet no adamantine wall helps it not to flow over the land and disobey its very Maker, but the word of its Maker suffices as a rampart for the land against the sea; and sand holds it back, or rather law restrains both the violence of the winds from outside and the flow of the waters, so that no part of the land is flooded, and created things are friendly as brothers to one another, truly claiming one Creator.

For who has ever recorded that in heaven one star rose up against another, or that on earth animals fought another kind so as to wipe it out or, on the contrary, to be wiped out? Even where one animal attacks another, this too has been legislated by the Creator’s wisdom to consume their excess, and both their existence and their being consumed are for the sake of men.

And if someone goes in thought to the very principles of bodies and considers the four elements, blended by their opposition into harmony, he would be still more amazed at the harmony of existing things, as having their being from one alone. For in them opposition is the occasion of friendship, and the fighting of their nature is the cause of the highest peace. They are four in number, but come together as one; or rather they need one another in order to exist, and by their very opposition help one another, hiding in one another and appearing through one another. It is a small thing to say that the hot was not chilled by the cold, nor quenched by the moist, nor was the dry burned up by fire or dissolved by the moist. For they are the subsistence of one another and dwell wonderfully in one another. And fire might seem to be alone, yet it is not without the moist and the dry, fed by which it shines; as the others too are in one another, showing their opposition only to touch, yet so fond of one another that they seem to have no discord. These things proclaim, even in silence, the ineffable wisdom of the one unbegotten, by whom they came into being and were blended. For a body could not come from one simple element; a body would subsist by mixture. And what mixture is there of the dry alone? What of the moist, if it is by itself? So variety is necessary for the mixture of one body, and the opposition of these, pressing toward unity, is necessary, for the wonder of the Creator. They did not first subsist by themselves and then come together, but received their coming into being together and, having come into being at once, were distinguished by the senses. For when a body had come to subsist, reason and mind distinguished by perception the things joined; so that their opposition was detected afterwards by perception of the body that had come into being, which was blended from them; they did not exist beforehand, but received their being concurrently with it.

Who could worthily admire the power of the Creator and the harmony of what has come to be, how all things are without war and peaceful, except for the injustice of men? The whole creation, then, stands firm, moving its own orderly motion but keeping unmoved the law its Maker set over it. And who, if the senses of his soul were healthy, would choose, when things are so, and with countless others that surpass every mind, to fabricate in his account another principle and raise it up in opposition to the only unbegotten God? To dream of a principle in agreement and identical is superfluous, since the one rules; and to suspect an opposite one is utterly mad, since the universe is in harmony, adorned with variety, and by the wisdom of its Maker shows kindness and serenity together with gravity. For all kindness unmixed is very harmful and irrational, while gravity and severity by itself, without a share of kindness, tends toward savagery and inhumanity; but both together train and please, delight and frighten, promise kindness and threaten fearful things, hold out the hope of gifts and display the danger of punishments, so that the reasoning of those who live on earth may neither be plunged by the slackness of pleasures into unmeasured ease nor be maimed by being stunned by unceasing dread, but may be trained moderately from both sides toward reverence and virtue.

What has been said above from the facts themselves and from the common notions might perhaps secure the minds of all, even of those outside the church, so that they would by no means accept the madman’s blasphemy against the Creator of all. But since he has devised another hunt, terrible and grievous, against those who belong to the church, wresting certain sayings of the holy Scriptures to serve his false account, it is time to bring against him the refutations from the divine Scriptures too, for the safety of believers, since some are sometimes led astray by the outlandish and very implausible interpretations of his followers. For pursuing by various methods the error he devised with the cooperation of the devil, he tries to prevail. Among the Greeks he does not overturn their teachings, but raises their lesser evils to a greater mass of impiety and leads them into a more malignant paganism, going along with them in almost every statement and inserting, by agreement in evil and dangerous teachings, the addition of his own fictions. Among Christians, he supposedly follows Christian things, and by the plausibility of the name of Christ and the appearance of decency in the words of Scripture, covering the wolf (which he is) within and putting the fleece on outside, he becomes a deceiving star to the flock, and so dazzles the less sensible. And having resolved to collect a most novel impiety from himself and from others, so that none of those who have come to know Christ should even try to examine the novelty of the evils he gathered, he called himself the Paraclete, covering his deceit by using a name not only above man but above angels, so that by the credibility of the title those who are otherwise foolish might accept what he says without discernment. And sometimes too, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, the barbarian, barbarian in both race and mind, sends his impiety to barbarians. But of these things later.

Of the Scriptures, he ascribes the older ones, the Law and the Prophets, to what he calls evil; the Gospels and the other teachings of the New Testament he says were given by the good (as he thinks). Yet the inventor of blasphemy does not insist that even these are wholly pure of the opposite God (as he says), but that there are present in them too (as by a kind of mixture) many things of what he calls matter, and that one must remove these and leave alone by themselves those things which he reckons to the portion of the good. So, taking in hand the correction of the holy Scriptures (as he thinks) by himself, and for this reason above all daring to seem to be the Paraclete, he cuts out most things, and leaving a few that lack the agreement of the related words of the New Testament, he thinks he has surrounded himself with complete safety, as having left only what can be drawn to his portents; yet these too clearly refute his unmeasured madness, as the discourse, God granting, will clearly show when it comes to them.

But first we must show how irrational his blasphemy against the older holy Scriptures is: in this he joins wicked men older than himself, cast out by the church, but he surpasses all of them in impiety. If, then, as the Greeks wholly disbelieve the histories of the Scriptures, he too in disbelief said that what is recorded there did not happen at all or happened by chance, we would not raise anything against him about these, nor would he incur a greater refutation through them. But since he admits that they truly happened, and says that their cause is the evil that does not exist, come, let us now show how he ascribes the great works and the greater wonders to the evil he slanders, not understanding (being blind in his reasoning) the extraordinary economies of God, the Creator of all, in the histories.

That man himself, or one of his followers, says word for word, heading the chapter “On the first fashioning of man”:

“For when the rulers knew that, from the taking away of the portion of light that had once fallen into them, death would quickly come upon them, they contrived the descent of the soul into bodies, seeking that it should not rise up again at all, and that, if it did go up, it should not be found worthy of the lot above, bearing the defilements of the flesh.” And a little after: “Therefore each of them,” he says (that is, of the rulers of matter), “in the way we described before, because of the movement that occurred and of the one who first appeared for the redemption of the soul, when the door was first opened in astonishment … unwillingly sent down the power within him, shaped himself as a lure for the soul, and fashioned an image of himself on the earth, to which he compelled the souls, bewitched, to cling inseparably. And the first fashioning of them is Adam, an instrument of desire, a bait for the souls from above, and a device for their falling into bodies.”

We must first consider how great a wisdom he attributes to the rulers (as he thinks) of matter, which he decries as wholly ignorant: so that, in order not to be deprived of the light mixed with them, they contrived through the flesh the descent of the soul into themselves, not allowing it to run back up again, and, if it did run up, showing it unworthy of things above, defiled by the flesh; so that it is wholly impossible for the good to keep his own soul entire, defeated by the devices of the rulers of matter.

And how is it not laughable still to speak about these things? But since he says that Adam is the first fashioning of the rulers of matter, an instrument of desire and a bait for the souls from above, we have so far learned that he clearly says man was fashioned by matter, which does not exist; he who everywhere assigns the greater share to matter and evil by pretence of slander now says that matter made man, the most royal and ruling of all the living beings in the bodily world, since he alone is rational and wonderful in the reasoning of his nature and in his pursuits.

Raising doubts about the whole world too, for what purpose it came to be, and trying to show about man that he is not God’s creation, he foolishly raises other questions too: “How did God give a commandment to Adam?” he says. “For it is one of two things: either he knew that Adam would transgress, and so he not only gave it in vain but is the cause of his transgression; or, if he did not know, one must say that God is clothed in ignorance.” So that the commandment was given, but (as he thinks) by evil and nothing else, as a plot against man; and man was benefited in the greatest way and set free by obeying the counsel of the serpent, which he defines as an angel of the good. “For he was blind,” he says, “but having tasted what was forbidden he saw himself, that he was naked, and used the covering he found, and knew good and evil.” So he was most benefited by transgressing the command of the one who had fashioned him treacherously. “And how,” he says, “would it befit God to say, ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us, in knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat and live for ever’? For if it was possible to receive immortality, he who drove the man out of paradise and shut him off from sharing in the tree of life, by sharing in which he could have had immortality for ever, was envious.” He also reproached the murder of Abel, and, going on, put forward the flood as one that would not have been brought …

… from the disciples … has come from the teaching. And if you wish to learn that the demons themselves too are not evil from the root, nor have a root of perversity, but that they too have come to this by choice, not being wicked by nature, not inscribed in ignorance, nor being night and darkness in substance, but having become such by habit and practices and by undertaking such things, let us examine the argument. A blind nature will not come to even the smallest and slightest sight, and ignorance itself

will not claim a drop of knowledge for itself, nor will night itself and darkness, being so by nature, be changed into even a brief brightness. Yet the demons are seen both knowing the Saviour and confessing him Lord, saying, “We know who you are, the Son of the living God.” But ignorance cannot know, and a blind nature has no strength to see. They know, and in knowing they speak truth, and they speak not as slanderers. For they speak the truth, even if not with a genuine disposition; they are no longer accused of a blind nature or of ignorance. For if they saw not even the least, they would not have been suppliants, nor yielded to what was said, nor distinguished the one who appeared as other than the many, but would have thought that he differed in nothing from themselves. For see, irrational animals cannot know, among wise and unwise men, which are wise and which unwise; but if the demons knew, and, knowing how to distinguish, are free of lack of discernment, having recognized such a one by discernment, then here too it is shown that not nature but choice rules. For whether choice understands or errs, it is still not freed from being rational, but has this undestroyed. So the demons too recognized him, besought him, implored him not to command them to go into the abyss. If they were children of the abyss, if they had kinship with the abyss, why do they flee what is akin to them? Why do they refuse their own root? They would rather have welcomed it, thinking kinship a rest for themselves; for recovery comes among kin, and ill-treatment among strangers. They ought rather to have refused Jesus, rather to have refused this place where the earnest and decent are, and to have welcomed the abyss, or arrival in the abyss. But by refusing and guarding themselves and not enduring to go there, but imploring for this reason, they have given sufficient evidence that they have no natural kinship with the places of punishment. For nothing ever harms itself, but everything harmed is harmed by another. For what harms must be the harming not of itself but of something else naturally able to suffer or be harmed. See, fire does not burn itself; it will consume something else, not itself. See, water does not flood itself; it knows how to flood other things, but cannot flood itself. See, the air does not know how to chill itself; since everything that acts and harms harms and grieves something else. But if the abyss is evil and the demons are harmed by the abyss, and the abyss is a place of torment,

and the demons are racked there, they are no longer tormented by what is like them, but, being other, they are tormented by another, no longer of this nature or substance; for the abyss has been shown to be of another substance. That the demons are of another kind and another substance than the abyss, what has been said is enough. And this abyss is a place of torment and punishment, but not eternal or unbegotten; it came into being later at some time, was made late, as a medicine and help for those who have sinned. For scourges are sacred, being medicine for those who have sinned; blows are sacred, being helps for those who have fallen. For blows have not come about so that people may be evil, but scourges have come about so that they may not be evil. For the wicked, pained by the blow, cut short their evils by the scourge. That is why we do not blame the abysses either, but know that they have come to be places of torment and punishment, being the chastening of those who have sinned. And if the abyss is a place of torment and racking, and the demons are racked and tormented and have a substance susceptible to torments, and can feel pain, are subject to punishment and perceive their chastisements, how are they unbegotten? How eternal? How did they never begin? How are they from themselves, who are not impassible, who can suffer and are able to be punished? For the unbegotten will never suffer anything, nor be punished by anyone; but having begun from itself it remains for itself, and not having received its beginning from another, it does not receive punishment from another; and not claiming a cause, it will not claim one who chastises, and will not be judged by another, not having begun from another; and it will fear no one, having received its being from no one. For what will it fear, if it has a perfect constitution, a perfect completion, if it was completed from itself and fitted to itself? For things whose harmony can be affected fear the one able to change their harmonies; what can suffer fears the one who acts. And if the demons fear and can suffer, they are not unbegotten. For the unbegotten is impassible and cannot suffer, being outside the nature of begotten things. And that they implore shows that they are in perception, and know what they are, and know that they can suffer. For they were not ignorant of themselves; they did not reckon themselves impassible. And for someone to know himself, and not to be ignorant, is a symbol and sign of perception. And if, because they are susceptible to suffering, they were afraid, and in fear implored, and implored the one who was able,

they were not ignorant of the one who was tracking them; for this supplication of theirs bears witness that they knew the one tracking them. That they were susceptible to suffering and passible they did not ignore; and that the one tracking them was the Lord and King of all things they plainly knew, as their supplication shows. We have set out these things about demons so that the argument about demons too may not be idle. For it is possible to add this too: that a nature is like itself and has no difference from itself. See, fire is wholly like itself, neither less hot than itself nor more; it does not have more and less. For in natures more and less are idle; and where there is more and less, it is no longer nature but progress of choice. And if it is written about demons too that one “goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself,” and progress appears from the saying, that one is wicked and another more wicked, a difference of wickedness, where is there still a nature, since it is not like itself? A difference in wickedness is found, and the difference bears witness to choice and not to nature. Enough of such arguments; let us try, having first set out their first myth-making, to use arguments that overturn it. “There was evil,” he says, “and it was unbegotten; and there was also God, the good, and the places of dwelling were divided, and each by itself was free of the other. God was separated from evil, and the ruler of evil was separated from God, and each was by himself and ruled his own and managed as his nature was: the evil one evilly and the good one well; the evil one harming, and harming his own, and never ceasing to harm his own; the good one always good and beneficial, benefiting his own and never not benefiting. For all benefit came forth from the good.” Inconsistencies of teaching! They fought, they sought the last things, they could not find them, not having received the consequence from the beginning. These things are small and not many, but sufficient for the inquiry; for I have only set out the outline and have not gone down into a multitude of testimonies. The reader will seek things akin to what is said, and from these will go on to similar and kindred readings. But come, let us set out their account, putting forward their doctrines. Satan was wicked, and God was good. And so it was. I turn the myth round, so as to put the myth to shame; and unless I set out what they explain, to put to shame the …

… I have no myth-making. “God was good,” he says, “and Satan wicked. And he was wicked and there was never a time when he was not; for he always was, and was not from anyone. For he was, and was a root,” he says. “And He was Lord, and he himself was, and was a root, a good root, a root of good things, and everything good came forth from him. For there were two roots, and two processions came forth, the processions corresponding to the roots.” From that one come such things, and from this one such things, they keep repeating. Let us stop there; let us now attempt the examination, look at syllogisms and recall sayings, so that we may both draw conclusions by syllogisms and persuade by sayings. We shall say to them: since God was a root, and a good root, and good fruits were brought forth from good roots, and Satan was a root, and an evil root, and evil fruits were brought forth from an evil root, whose fruits are the apostles? So that from the fruits we may learn what is sought, which I do not take from the roots. For we shall say: the evil root knows how to bring forth nothing good, nor does the good root know how to bring forth anything evil; but the apostles appear sometimes good and sometimes bad, good at last but bad at first, having made a change from evil. If, then, we say that the apostles are fruits of Satan because of their old stumblings, they will be put to shame by their apostleship and the perfection of their virtues; and if of God, what will they say about the old stumblings and the old accusation? For the writing will put them to shame and refute their judgement. And if, at a loss and unable to answer, they ask in return, saying that the solution of the premises is difficult and the proof difficult, we too shall say that the apostles are not fruits of God but works and creatures. For they were not brought forth as fruits from a root, but became creatures and works of their Maker, as from a creator and maker, not as consubstantial with their Maker. For they are begotten from the unbegotten, once not existing, later made, receiving being from their Maker; not substances from a substance, but subsistent beings made by the goodness of the Creator, and made so as to have their principle in choice. So the Saviour is seen saying, “If anyone wishes to come after me,” “If you wish to be perfect,” “Do you wish to become well?” If the one who made these things, through whom the Father made all things, calls in this way, note the words of the Maker. He laid down the laws in willing; in willing he

stores up what is lawful; he knows the will of those who act as the ground of what is done. Honouring the partnership of deeds, the Word hung it on willing: “If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you are not willing and do not listen to me, the sword will devour you.” But it would be absurd to leave aside the account of the very worst, and to leave out the examination of those who lived most shamefully and dissolutely, lest our silence produce in them a most grievous folly. Do they not greatly slander Nebuchadnezzar? Do they not greatly blame Pharaoh? Have they not thought them the limit of shamefulness? For they repeat such things up and down about their conduct. If, then, no earnestness appeared in their minds, the account would be different; but if even in those so evil there are found parts of good, perceptions and apprehensions, repentance and supplications, what will they still say? For if this most shameful man should appear to have some parts of virtue and fitness of character, what will they say? Either they will say that Satan is mixed of virtue and vice, as having borne mixed fruits, or that these are not fruits of the devil. For mixed things would no longer be fruits of what is unmixed, nor will the unmixed appear a root of the mixed. And these appeared mixed, having in time received knowledge and been taken by wickedness. And by this argument it will appear a fiction of words and not a reality of truth. For see, Pharaoh under the rebukes gives way and softens; he gives way in his mind, and, struck in soul, does not persist in his harshness but does two things: he asks for prayer and condemns what has happened; and his soul is not seen maimed, but looking and moving to repentance, grasping at request and supplication, and pleading for the sake of prayer. But if he had been evil by nature, how did he know about prayer and repentance? For if repentance is good, prayer too is good; and if his nature was evil, how was evil mixed with good? How was good brought forth from evil? So they seem not to know what they say, but with an uninstructed mind bring forth spittle of words rather than words. And if Nebuchadnezzar too, though harsh in character, having prepared the furnace, made the image, frightened by his threat and compelled people to worship the statue, when the holy men were thrown inside and the flame drew back and did not touch their bodies, and the furnace became a place of assembly, and hymns were sung inside instead of laments,

and no longer was a dirge sent up from burning flesh, but a song was performed from a soul keeping festival, he stooped to see what was inside and was honoured with the sight of the angel. He uttered the cry, “Did we not throw three men into the furnace? See, I see four, and the fourth like a son of God.” At once, then, he writes a law about this, to confess God; he becomes a witness to the truth, an interpreter of the vision. Shall we slander his interpretations, then, or praise them? To be an ambassador for Christ is good. Or shall we leave it in the wicked portion? For if to be an ambassador of the divine oracles and a witness to the truth is good, and Nebuchadnezzar was an ambassador, wrote and sent to his whole realm, then the [doctrine of] nature is undone. For knowing the good, he looked toward learning the good. And if he blunted the learning by his disposition toward wickedness, he is accused. For it is one thing to be wholly unable to do good, another to know it but be unable, being overcome by inclination to the passions. And since no fruits of the devil were found among men, and their way was put to shame and their absurdity refuted, where shall we turn now? Unless we go to the demons, if they should say, “No man is a fruit of the devil, but demons alone are his offspring and progeny.” And saying this they will be put to shame in this too; but first let them hear. If no man so far has been freed from the one, then Satan has nothing in common with this life, but is separated from all things. He has become a stranger to all, he has been cast out, swallowed down; and evil is capturable and dissoluble, being dissolved and consumed; it will no longer have the condition of things that do not vanish; and not having a harmless and indestructible nature, it will no longer be suspected of being unbegotten; and not being unbegotten, evil will appear neither without beginning nor without end, once not existing and now seeming to buzz about. For what it is, is not a substance, but a sickness that has befallen substances, able to be separated from substances and subsistent beings. For that the deceiver himself is what he is by a fall and by ruin, the fall and the slip bearing witness by the removal of the goods that existed before, Isaiah the prophet bears witness: “How has the morning star fallen from heaven, rising early!”, knowing his present state as fallen and his old state as divine and most radiant; and the Saviour bears witness too, saying in the Gospel, “See, I see

Satan fallen like lightning from heaven.” If he had been so by nature and had always been so, it would not have been called a fall in one place and a falling away in another. For what falls, falls from some standing; and what falls away departs from some wealth. If he is spoken of among the fallen, he was once in a standing and firmness; and if he is accused among those who have fallen away, he was not poor, was not ever an Irus, when he had much wealth, but, having suffered the loss of that wealth through some sickness, he is judged among the beggared. The Scripture certainly admits the wealth. For if “how has the morning star fallen away,” and the name was wealth, and being the morning star he had the very working and power and wealth and possession of the morning star, and falling away from it became empty of it, he is poor in the wealth of the morning star, wanders and is in danger, an Irus and fallen away, he who of old had much wealth. And if, according to the Gospel, he is among those who fall and lie on the ground and roll about now on the earth, he once stood and could say, “Our feet were standing in your courts, O Jerusalem”; he could hear, “Stand, having girded your loins with truth”; and though able to hear, he did not keep safe the saying, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,” and having made no provision for such things, he rolls about in them today. For what always lies on the ground could not fall (for it lies on the ground), but what has fallen and come to the ground from those standing and supported must have come to fall; and what is always poor and has never received any wealth will never fall away, for it always has nothing and cannot fall away, never having had anything. But what has undergone and suffered a falling away comes from much wealth and substance. Such is the first refutation. But since (they say) evil, advancing further and stretching itself out and coming near the light, snatched from the light and swallowed from the light, come, let us not refuse to overthrow the advocacy they have made for the wicked one against the truth. For by this account they exalt wickedness and cheapen truth, and give sinews to wickedness, while supposing truth without sinews. For if wickedness snatched, and the light was snatched, and being snatched suffered, and suffering was passible, then by their account God is passible and Satan impassible, the one able to suffer, the other able to act. For since the light

is passible, he himself too would be passible, not being other than the light, if indeed it could suffer, and suffer not from itself but from the enemy who fights it, and depart from itself and come to be with the worse. And how is the one who has a unifying nature separated from his own? For things that are by nature are not naturally separated from themselves. If the light was unbegotten and united to the unbegotten, how could it ever be separated? How could it be freed from itself and become other than itself? For if it served the wicked one and, forced by wickedness, then chose the things of wickedness and did the things of wickedness, and was ignorant of itself and no longer recognized itself, but had become forgetful of itself, and thought itself to be such as the wicked is, the account will appear self-contradictory. For the unbegotten neither is ignorant of itself nor will become other than itself, but remains such as it was and will never be freed from itself, never having begun to be. But since they utter old wives’ and moldy tales, not knowing what they say, but put to shame by what they say, let us add this too to the account. The light could be changed and become other than itself, come to be with wickedness, forget itself, and do whatever wickedness does; the rulers of wickedness could also suffer this, and rather be changed to the good. But since the change is in force and alteration is possible, how was it not better for the evil to be changed to virtue rather than the good to vice? And how did God endure it and allow the light to be taken? How did he not check the onrush? How did he not keep his own? How after the removal did he not wish to provide for what was removed? How did he not check the attempt beforehand? How did he not rather keep them uncapturable, and not honour with help those captured and taken? If he allowed it so that the light, coming among the evil, might change the evil, as though evil could be changed, then evil things are no longer natural, being able to change, and from evil things he receives the change as a pledge against nature. But if he knew that it would not change, and that evil is not naturally altered, how did he in vain let the good suffer loss and not bestow gain on the evil? And how does he know that evil things themselves are not altered, but overlooked himself and his own good things being altered? For this is an absurd definition: that he himself is alterable because his own things are altered, while matter is not altered. And of this such is the

refutation, so that we may cut short a long discourse, passing over in silence their emissions, their battles, those myth-makings and battles of giants, so that what has been said about the beginning of things may be said as a kind of starting point and be a seed of inquiries. Let us also work out the account concerning the law, having moderately raised the account concerning the beginning. For they think they accept the Gospel, but are eager to blame the Law and the Prophets, and they have slandered the whole Old Testament. They have pretended to honour the Gospels, putting on rather an honour for the Gospels, so as to take the pretence as a bait for those they deceive. For they do not confess to honour the Gospels because they agree with the Gospels, but because the name of Jesus has been honoured, they pretend. For if they honoured the Gospels, they ought not to circumcise the Gospels, nor take away parts of the Gospels, nor add others, nor write additions to the Gospels by reason or their own opinion. Nor does a tongue hold these Gospels, and they pass them on by reading. At any rate they have added whatever they wished and taken away whatever they judged, and they lie in the name too … For this middle and indifferent thing will never be by itself, but takes the imitation of each, and will come to share in either, and has this state, able to be in participation of either. And it will no longer be an unbreakable and dividing wall, preventing the attack of each. For being in the middle and changing its form by communion with one, it joins the one that has taken it, and would become either divine, imitating God, or evil, having taken the stamp of evil. And if this happened, it would no longer be vice against virtue, but two would move against one, and the other would be besieged, pressed by two. For wherever the middle inclined, the account, appearing doubled by the addition, carries out the attack against the other. And if they say the middle is no longer a wall dividing the substances from neighbouring and approaching one another, but some empty and gaping middle, the cause of separation, they will again say what they do not know. For what is gaping, what is empty, other than a notion of the empty and gaping? If it is something, it is not empty or gaping; but if it is nothing, and for this reason is empty because it is nothing, and for this reason gaping because it does not exist at all, how does what does not exist divide existing things? How does what does not exist at all separate the existing and the real? For things that in no way

exist cannot distinguish existing and real things. And such was the refutation brought. But since, advancing still in error and deceit, they bring forth still more deceitful and erring words, let us not keep silent. For they say that wickedness, advancing and moving against itself, wronged itself and ravaged itself, but when it came to the region of truth, it was struck with amazement and wondered at the sudden light; it forgot its own fighting, attacked what appeared, snatched light, swallowed what it saw. Here there is much laughter and great mockery; here every Greek myth is trampled, defeated by this figure. For myths are told as myths, but believed as myths; but this one, if it were believed as a myth as it is told as a myth, would do little harm; but as it is, it surpasses the myths and is believed by the foolish as truth. For if, as you say, being mad and besieging itself by itself, having reached its own borders, it saw light, was amazed, was freed from its own fighting, attacked what appeared [and] snatched what it saw, how will these accounts not appear impossible and false? For how did wickedness wrong itself, destroy itself, abolish itself, now swallowing, now begetting, if it was unbegotten? For it was being dissolved in destroying itself, and could no longer exist, destroying itself. And if it had its parts destroyed, what sufficient pledge is there that the whole is not destroyed, when the parts have kept being destroyed? And if it begot itself and began to be, then beginning to be it was also begotten. How then still unbegotten? So they will receive the refutation of their absurd opinion not from another but from their own nonsense. For in uttering much they utter things fighting against themselves, and no longer wait to be made to blush by another, but in talking nonsense suffer this from their own rashness. For how could what can be dissolved and admits dissolution and can be destroyed be unbegotten? How could it be from itself? How did it not begin from another? Since such a thing is indestructible and impassible, while what can vanish and be destroyed is not from itself. And if it is destroyed, as you say (for your account defines this, admitting the swallowing), being is alteration and the swallowing of the … destruction … they call the Gospel, not having kept the body of the Gospel as a body, but another body of letters reaching as far as the name of the Gospel,

having made it to suit their own wishes. For they have dishonoured the Gospels more than others. For those who do not accept them, and in not accepting do not corrupt them, only shake them off, but do not trespass on the writings; but these, seeming to have received them, have trespassed on the writings, danced upon them, peddled them, and done the works of sorcerers and wicked men. Those disbelieved, and used bare unbelief; they did not endure to study what they did not believe. These, coming into the middle, have tried to loosen the harmony, dared to destroy the rhythm with artful teachings, making the name of the Gospel a pretext for deceit. For if they knew the Gospel, they would not be ignorant of the Law; and if they were ignorant of the Law, how did they accept Jesus? For Jesus is not received without the Law. For he who longs for the end investigates the beginning, but he who despises the beginning suffers in vain, speaks in vain, and has no arrival at the end. And if Christ is the end of the Law, they toil in vain, being fugitives from the Law while professing to know Jesus. Unless the Law speaks, the Lord is not recognized. For the silence of the Law is ignorance of the one proclaimed, and learning the Law is knowledge of the one announced beforehand. For if they had listened to Moses, they would have believed in the one who has come. Certainly the one who was raised is not believed unless the Law produces faith in those who hear. For even if someone says, “Send Lazarus to tell my brothers not to come into the way of this torment,” and when Abraham says, “They have Moses and the prophets,” he says, “Unless someone rises from the dead, they will not believe,” he will hear, “If they did not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they listen if someone rises from the dead.” Ah! For neither does the message of the one raised … the Law and the Prophets … Jesus, without their company, did not think fit to appear even to the apostles; and though able to be borne witness by the Father, he did not dishonour the company of the saints; but wishing to give the eyes of the apostles a most exact faith, when he led them up on the mountain and was transfigured, he showed Moses and Elijah, so that the company of holiness might become a testimony, and so that whoever receives Jesus might not dishonour those with him, lest, cheapening the bodyguards and servants, he dishonour the king himself. So great care, at any rate, has the Saviour taken of the Law and the Prophets that he left nothing of the Law incomplete, but fulfilled all that was written, and cried out, “I did not come

to abolish the law, but to fulfil it”; and to enter the temple and drive out the improper dealings, so that, returning the house clean, he might give the most exact proof by the deed that he cared for things that were his own and his Father’s. For he cries, “My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” And since there are countless sayings able to put their absurd opinion to shame, so that we may not stretch the discourse to length by using more words, let us leave it to others to use the correspondences of the sayings, while we, using them in measure, go on to the very oppositions of the oracles. Accepting the Gospel, they do not accept the Law; for they do not accept even the holy Gospel entire. For they would have received the Law too if they accepted the Gospel entire. But as it is, having first peddled the Gospel, they naturally do not accept the Law. They are convicted, then, of not enduring the Law because they have robbed the Gospel. And if the Gospel bears witness and they do not honour the Law, they have dishonoured the testimony; for it is no longer dishonour of the Law but unbelief in the witness. And if one of the Gospels bore witness and another were silent, and the dishonour fell on one alone, the other Gospels would not have kept silent, thinking the dishonour of one a common dishonour. But if Mark says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet,” and Matthew, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham,” and the one knows Abraham as forefather of the birth according to the flesh and honours David, while the other joins the Gospel to the Law and has understood the Law as the beginning of the Gospel, then the Saviour speaks truly when he says, “He who rejects you rejects me”; for the dishonour no longer stops at the Law but goes up to the Saviour himself. Let the Jews hear, “If you listened to Moses, you would listen to me; for he wrote about me”; and let the Manichees hear, “If you listened to the Gospel, you would listen to the Law; for the Gospel has written about the Law.” But the Jews, taking a veil, have neither understood the Law nor recognized the one announced; while the heretics have eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear, and, not having peered into the Gospels, they have fought the Law. For see, John cries, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John; he came for testimony,

to bear witness to the light.” He knows the witness and knows the one witnessed to, and he describes the witness beforehand: “The Law and the Prophets were until John.” So John bears witness, and the Law is a witness, and the Law is witnessed to. See how great an absurdity unbelief about the testimonies entails. And when these have spoken so, neither is Luke silent. For he speaks the same voice and utters things in harmony with the others, and narrates that Gabriel, appearing to Mary, gave a heavenly greeting, saying, “Hail, favoured one, the Lord is with you”; and when she was troubled at the word and reasoned within herself, saying, “What sort of greeting might this be?”, he said, “Do not fear, Mary; for you have found favour before God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And David is honoured and confessed father of the Saviour, and the rule remains and is handed to the Lord and receives no end, the rule being glorified in what has no end. These, then, are the beginnings of the Gospels. For we had to weave the discourse from the beginnings, so that one following behind the discourse may perceive the sequence and harmony of the words from all the Gospels. And since the apostolic ministry too keeps a Gospel character, and Paul knows it and measures his own ministry of sufferings as a part of the Gospel (for he says, “according to my gospel through Jesus Christ”), let us not omit the beginnings of the apostle either, but call them to mind too, so that, having gone through all the Scriptures and the beginnings of the Scriptures, we may arrange them by the agreement of the Law. Writing to the Hebrews he says thus: “In many parts and many ways God spoke of old to the fathers in the prophets; in these last days he has spoken to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages.” Here he knows the Father of the Son, and a Father who knows the Son. He does not divide the matter, he is not silent about the ancients, he does not ascribe the prophets to another, but to God of the prophets and Father of the Son. And Paul has not divided or separated, but proclaims one and the same, worshipped by them and having begotten this one, the begetter of this one, and using those as worshippers and servants. For he whose servants the prophets are,

his son is Christ. And if you honour the Son but slander and revile the servants, you utter with your mouth what you please. Do you see that the Son is indignant? He does not endure the Father being insulted. For if the Father has reckoned the dishonour of the Son as his own dishonour, how much more will the Son reckon the insult to the Father as his own cheapening? And so that, proceeding little by little, we may put them to shame step by step, let us attempt this. If the Law is God’s, why do they not accept the Law? And if you slander the Law, whose words and voice is the Law? By whose power was what is written in the Law spoken? For here the heresies divide and no longer argue alike, but against one another. The Valentinians say this, the Manichees that, and elsewhere Marcion testifies spittle and not words against the Law. The Valentinians say, “The God of the Law was just, and being just he was not the Father of the Son. Jesus,” they say, “is good; and the Father is good too; the Father of the Son is good, and what is begotten is good; but the God of the Law is just.” And arguing so, they have not understood what relation the just has to the good, nor have they conceived even in imagination that whatever is just is good and whatever is good is just. Since they cannot have such ideas, let them be asked only this: if the God of the Law is just and is not the Father of the Son, Jesus is not just; and how do we look for justice from the Son? If he was not begotten of the just one, how does he judge? How does he give sentence? How has the judgement seat been entrusted to him by the Father? How does he repay each according to what he did? How does Paul speak truly when he says, “To those who by endurance in good work seek eternal life, God works with them for good; but to those who from rivalry obey unrighteousness, wrath and fury, affliction and distress, upon every soul of man who does evil”? For the words are undone if the definition of the just is not given to the Son. But if punishment is laid down for those who have stumbled, and the oversight of the just is the measure of punishment, while honours and gifts are stored up for those who are approved, and honour is weighed by the judgement of the just, how are they set apart and not checked in their rashness? And if the Only-begotten is such, but the Father not such, then like is no longer begotten of like, no longer the image of the begetter, no longer the “stamp”, no longer the “radiance”, no longer “he who sees the Son sees the Father”, if the Father does not have all that the Son has. And the Saviour cries in the

Gospel, “Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.” What shall we do? Turn our backs on the Saviour’s word? Disbelieve what is written? Or shall we admire the word (for it is the word of truth) and set the Valentinians, as madmen and demon-possessed, outside the godly and holy assemblies? But since we are doing something improper by lengthening the discourse against the heretics, when this subject does not draw us, let us call the discourse back and go to the subject before us, having considered these things too for the sake of profit, so that this account may not be wholly passed over in silence by us. For wickedness, divided three ways, has spoken against the Law, and using so many divisions it has used as many servants and champions of blasphemy, having chosen those able to serve it: through Valentinus, to belittle the Law and separate it from the Gospel; through Marcion, that the writing of the Law is from some abortion; through the Manichee, that it is from some wicked one, lightless, wholly darkness. Such things he fabricates, such little phrases he composes, he talks emptily, stunning untrained ears by the composition of words. That is why one must ask such questions: if the wicked one wrote the Law, that lightless one, being wholly and throughout darkness, how did he know of the coming of Jesus? How did he know of his arrival? How, before the things were done, did he understand what God planned, announced beforehand and showed beforehand? For the writings of the Law plainly testify from above to the arrival of the Son. If they say, “The Law did not show it, nor did the prophets signify it beforehand,” they will be refuted as speaking against what is manifest; not we weaving the refutation, but the Gospels themselves plainly speaking and crying out up and down, here, “that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled,” and there, “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it.” But if, clearly refuted by this, they agree, what will they answer? For if “no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God,” and the one who wrote the Law knew the things in God and understood whatever God willed, and for this reason wrote with oversight and knowledge, then the writer was God’s, and was God, and was in God, and for this reason spoke whatever God willed, understanding the things in God and not ignorant. And if no one knows our heart, but only the Maker knows it, and our heart learns others but cannot learn God, and what God willed was not

unknown to wickedness but known, and he planned while it knew, how do they not give great greatness to wickedness, able not to have even God’s counsel hidden from it? And how do they not slander God, as unable even to hide from wickedness? We laugh at men who, doing something against enemies, make their plan easy to detect; but weaving such an account they do not see that they are preparing mockery against God: that God, as general against wickedness, did not keep his own plans hidden, but had them easily detected by wickedness. And if even the divine and angelic powers cannot understand what the Father plans, the Son alone understanding and explaining (“No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known”), how did the wicked powers know the things in God, when not even the divine powers can know them, unless a tradition of teachings is handed down from the Only-begotten’s explanation? And that the Law itself tells beforehand all the things of his coming (“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son”), another prophet is not ignorant of the place (“And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah”), another of the manner of his placing (“The ox knew its owner, and the donkey its lord’s manger”), another of the flight into Egypt and the return from Egypt (“Out of Egypt I called my son”), another of the dwelling he had in youth (“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan: the people sitting in darkness saw a great light”), another is not ignorant of the forerunner (“A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”); and in general, if anyone wished, gathering the prophecies of the Law, to compose the whole Gospel, writing the things done here in prophetic words, he will appear a lover of learning and of letters, not explaining without the Spirit his teachings, his instruction, his baptism, the performing of signs, the judgement that took place, the betrayal of Judas, the economy on the cross, the gall and vinegar given him in his thirst, the burial itself and the tomb, the economy in Hades, the resurrection itself, and last the ascension. For then too he will cry, “Lift up the gates, you rulers, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in.” Then he will add

what was written by David too: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” If, then, the Law so exactly described the coming of the Son and announced it from afar, it is no longer slandered, no longer ascribed to another. He who begot spoke beforehand; he who planned anticipated the events by word; God begot, God says, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” God sent; God spoke through Moses, “The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet from your brothers; you shall listen to him in all that he says to you.” God planned, and the one who planned was not silent; he disclosed the plan beforehand, producing faith through what was disclosed. “For his name will be called,” it says, “Angel of great counsel, wonderful counsellor, ruler of peace, father of the age to come.” Such, then, is this refutation. And since they ascribe the Law to the wicked one, what will they say if one of them is asked whether the wicked one, who advises wicked things and cannot not advise wicked things, will ever advise good things and counsel what is good? If they say that he is by nature able to advise good things and counsel what is good, they again undo their own definition; for one who does not advise wicked things is no longer wicked, one who counsels good things is no longer wicked. But if no good choice comes forth from a wicked one, to what rank will they assign those exhortations, “You shall not commit sexual immorality, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness”? To what rank will they assign what is written, “You shall not make for yourself idols, nor a likeness of anything, neither of what is in heaven nor of what is on earth nor of what is in the waters”? To what portion will they assign the commands, “You shall not covet your brother’s ox or beast of burden or wife or any animal”? If they say such things are holy and divine and lovely, they will be put to shame by the exhortations, having been ignorant of the greatness of the one who counselled them. But if they say they are bad and blameworthy, and not committing sexual immorality is bad, and not coveting what belongs to others is bad, and such things are the bad things, consider what they will think good; consider that they are procurers of pleasures, agents of idols and inventors of shameful desire. For those who slander the Law plead for lawlessness. Those who ostracize the Law, which removes pleasures, destroys deceit and abolishes superstition, what else do they do but bring in pleasures and introduce desires? And so that pleasure

may rush unchecked into their minds, they have driven the Law out of their dwellings, so that, not using the Law, they may not be put to shame by the Law, but, having somehow shaken off the Law, may offer their ears wide open to desires. The Law appears as the destroyer of evil, but they have ignorantly and uninstructedly tried to slander the Law. The Law hates evil, but they hate the Law. The Law destroys superstition, but they dare to undo the Law. Let us set the facts against each other, then. If the Law is opposed to evil, and they fight the Law, they are indignant on behalf of evil, because the Law slanders evil; for not bearing the slander of evil, they have slandered the Law, so that the slander against evil may have no force when the Law has been slandered. If the Law destroys idols and abolishes polytheism, and they have taken up arms against the Law, they have naturally proclaimed polytheism. For so that the doctrine of polytheism may prevail, the command of the Law is suppressed among them, which says, “Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord,” and, “You shall love the Lord your God,” and, “Lest, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon, you worship them.” Against these words they have taken up arms; provoked by these commands they have sharpened their tongue like a sword. That is why they are possessed and honour everything and know nothing but to worship everything, and always fall to the ground while having an exalted mind, and wander and rove in their thinking. They have deified everything at will and have taken up error. They have surpassed the Greeks, becoming more Greek than the Greeks in multitude and emptiness, and by the greatness of their absurdity dulling the ignorance of those. And so that no one, using a most deceitful art, may say with contrivance, “The Law put on a show, and stealing some good things presented them as its own, wishing to dignify its own absurdities, and sowed in parts of good things, eager to hide the rest by means of parts of good things,” come, let us first examine whether anything absurd appears in the Law, and so let there be a refutation of their absurdity; second, whether it went after some parts of evil and scattered them … having shown believers free of every part of evil, the Law would no longer appear as putting on a show, but as an enemy and foe of evil; and third, whether it sowed some good things around and did not join every form of virtue to its writings, so that, if it appeared to have written some

and left out more, the refutation might have some force. But if all good things, throughout, have been set in the writings of the Law, let us admire the Law and confess it the law of God and call it the Father’s converse, and let us strike these men off, as having a counterfeit and debased mind. That the Law has no part of evil sown in it, and did not take away one part of evil while sparing another, but that the Law is pure and holy and the law of God, Paul cries: “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. For we know that the law is spiritual.” For what is holy and spiritual and good is free of every absurdity and endures no absurdity. It is dignified by virtues and converses with God. For converse with God endures no other order, but is regulated by the oversight of the Spirit. For “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And the Law, being spiritual, prepares converse with God; and the spiritual man can judge other things but is judged by no one; how much more will the spiritual Law itself be able to judge the reasonings of all others, but be judged by no one? And that it removed every form of evil and overlooked not one part, but went after it, removing [and] cutting off every form of evil, is plain from the definitions of evil, since there are four forms of evil: folly, licentiousness, cowardice and injustice. If the Law had been silent about anything bad, the Law would be incomplete; but if it went after it and worked it out thoroughly, removing every form of evil beforehand, evil is naturally checked by the Law, not allowed to keep even a remnant. Where the Law is in force and gives sinews to persuasion, not a drop of evil can be found; but where it is weak, wickedness goes about plundering and grazing, walking at will, having found its power in the soul’s unguardedness. For the Law cries, “If my people had listened to me, if Israel had walked in my ways, I would have humbled their enemies in no time.” For when the Law persuades, evils become without sinews, lying on the ground and unable even to face the soul. For if “your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths,” every stumbling block is removed, the heart being found enlightened and clear. For even if one has that young and slippery age, but keeps the guard of the words, he remains without falling and will cry, “By what

shall a young man make his way straight? By keeping your words.” And having gained for himself the power never to stumble by hiding the teachings of the Law in his mind, he says, “In my heart I have hidden your sayings, so that I may not sin against you.” And so, setting the Law as guard and keeper, he will understand how the Law drives out each of the forms of evil: driving out folly through the writing that says, “Do not be like horse and mule, which have no understanding”; banishing cowardice through the oracle that says, “Do not fear when a man grows rich”; “Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be overcome by their contempt”; and “Fear God and you will be strong; besides him fear no other.” For here, having shaken off cowardice, put in strength and thrown in courage, it cries, “The righteous is confident as a lion, which does not fear nor cower before any beast.” And having removed the two forms of evil, folly and cowardice, it removes licentiousness along with them, saying, “You shall not commit sexual immorality, you shall not commit adultery.” Where the passions are checked, the bridle of self-control is found in the mind. And with the three removed, it removes injustice too: “You shall not make for yourself small and large weights; let your weights be just and equal.” And so, the parts of evil removed, wickedness is undone, no longer able to set foot in the mind. What kind of absurdity, then, has the Law not removed? What parts of pleasure has it not undone? What cowardice? What folly? Did it not go after pleasure so far, in removing it, as to take care of the eyes, not spare the hearing, and not neglect the tongue? “I made a covenant with my eyes, and I will not look upon a virgin.” The holy man goes as far as the eyes, so that pleasure, tickling the soul, may not lead it into the trip of desire. Another of the saints cried, “Do not gaze at another’s beauty,” so that pleasure, not even reaching the soul’s porch, may not take hope of entrance, but, driven from the very doors, may have no hope for its plot. And going on to the ears and the tongues, he set guards and keepers on these members too, giving it no place of its own, but cried, “Set a guard, O Lord, on my mouth,” so that no improper word, going out without benefit, might offer the bait of pleasure to the one who utters shameful things. And taking care of the loins too, so that the mind, shaken this way and that, may not be bound, he provided by commanding, “So shall you eat

the Passover: your loins girded,” so that we may not, having our members ungirt, attempt things with easy movement, but, girded so, may find the best order toward affairs. And so, the forms of pleasure removed beforehand, it went after the forms of [folly] and the forms of injustice. For if to take what is another’s, and take it by force, and take it against his will, is injustice, and to take another’s things and give them to harlots or spend them prodigally is a form of injustice, then he is unjust who takes away the honour of God and gives it to wood and demons, spending the honour and being prodigal in his mind. For the one who spends his substance is not so prodigal as the one is unjust who wipes from his mind the great wealth, the honour of God. For as long as the wealth of knowledge holds together in the soul, the disposition toward God is rendered; but when it is all worn down, spent and beggared, then it carries off his honour to wood and craft. That is why the apostle too, knowing injustice as superstition, said, “and greed, which is idolatry.” Since, then, the most grievous part of injustice is ignorance toward God, and wrongdoing toward men is less, and injustice is divided in two, ignorance toward God and wrongdoing toward men, the Law in being written began with both. And first it cries, “You shall not make for yourself idols, a likeness of anything,” so that you may not, being prodigal with the Maker’s honour, utterly destroy it all. And it was rightly angry with the people too, when, having made the calf, they cried, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” For since they assigned the gifts of the benefactor to what cannot move, and it was the most grievous injustice to give the wealth of the Maker’s benefaction to craft and carving, truth was … and the Law was written and injustice was checked and the learner was instructed; and so, with the anger of injustice removed beforehand, it removed injustice toward man as well. And first it did not wish love of money to arise in the soul, since love of money begets injustices and desire for money begets greed. For the root of evils is love of money, and injustices and greed will be branches and shoots of love of money. And since greed begins from love of money and injustice takes hold beforehand, it removes it beforehand and proclaims beforehand, “If wealth flows in, do not set your heart on it,” so that

the mind, flowing along with the stream of money, may not be carried off by the flowing wealth. For if money flows and has no stability, the judgement rightly resists, not destroying its own stability by the flowing wealth. And since love of money grieves in one way, and love of glory in another, plundering the mind by the youth and bloom of glory, it dealt summarily with this passion too (“I saw the ungodly exalted and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not”), so that the mind, led on by no bloom that easily withers, may not sell its own greatness, but, looking beyond these things, may hold to the love of truth. And for this reason it honours moderation, drives out injustice and gives the divine dwellings to those who have kept moderation, and so cries, “Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent, or who shall dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks blameless and works righteousness, speaking truth in his heart,” so that, having banished every form of love of money, it may give no place to injustice. And so the Law went after every form and removed it. That is why one who speaks according to the Law speaks for truth; that is why the workers of truth are not indignant at the Law when it speaks against evil. The Saviour once spoke against love of money, and the Jews grew harsh; for love of money produced harshness against the speaker. Indeed, when a tutor talks to a lazy child about laziness, he is hated by the child; for everyone who cuts out the passion of youth is hated because of the love of pleasures. That is why the Law is hated by the heretics: since it went against the passions, marched against sins, spoke against what they love, they did not bear the matter. And so that our words may become still more magnificent, and the absurdity of the heresies, which have gone unjustly against the Law, may appear, let us not only add to the discourse that the Law removed every form of evil, but also contribute to the treatise that it guides and explains every form of virtue. For if the Law removed all the vices but did not put in all the virtues, the Law fell short, lacking the provision of the virtues, having banished all the vices but no longer betrothing all the virtues to the soul. But if the discourse shows that all the virtues lie in the Law and the Prophets, how must one not admire and accept the law of God? For there are four virtues, prudence, self-control,

courage and justice, and all the virtues appear in the Law. That is why whoever wishes to be self-controlled has the teachings. Whoever is eager to be prudent, taking the starting points of the Law, excels in the matter. Whoever wishes to be brave, let him be anointed with its commands. Whoever is eager to lay hold of justice, let him hold the scale of justice, and he will do nothing unequal, doing everything by the weight of justice. And sharing in prudence, let him say, “God taught me wisdom, and the understanding of men is not in me,” so that, thrusting away this fabricated and erring prudence, he may embrace the best and divine one. And of self-control the reader who seeks will find countless examples, imprinting the examples and taking the old examples as an ointment of self-control: that young man in his prime, given up by his brothers and bought by the Egyptian, who changed the freedom of his body but kept the freedom of his soul unchanged; who put off his garments so as not to put off his self-control; who had his garments taken by force but by necessity was not torn from self-control; who chose to suffer so as not to fall by the passion of pleasure; who instead of the passion of pleasure came into the rank of prisoners; who chose to be a prisoner so as not to be found a captive of pleasure; who preferred the ill repute of the shameful deed; who was willing to be thought what he was not: for he reckoned it better to be thought shameful than to be so and escape notice. For had he done it and escaped notice, he would have feared God as witness; but thought guilty, he was content with the Overseer bearing witness to what happened. And this is an example of self-control. Of courage there are many others, but that of Judith is enough: that she was a woman, weak and timid because she was a woman, but daring and brave because she was faithful; that she made possible by courage what was impossible to human expectations; that she brought the unexpected to faith and hope, having prevailed by courage and faith. For the walls were opened and the young woman went out, and went out with her maid alone, not fearing the suspicion her beauty might bring, not dreading the swords, not afraid lest she be defiled, lest she undergo licentiousness by force, not dreading lest she suffer something sudden from a sword; but conquering by courage the fearfulness of the sword, and entrusting her beauty to God. For she thought God a trustworthy guard of her beauty, and reckoned the swords as brushwood and papyrus, having trampled

cowardice by the resolve of courage. And the woman passed through and was not judged rash, nor incurred the charge of harshness. For what she had decided was not left incomplete, so as to be charged with harshness: she accomplished what she had planned; what she had considered was brought to completion. That is why she is admired, because she mixed prudence with courage, because she brought to completion all that she planned. Having taken this example of courage, we shall take one of justice too, when Abraham defends and fights for those wronged, and having helped them hears from those set free, “Take the horses and everything for yourself,” and, hearing this, does not look to gain but gazes at what is just, and recognizes that he received freely and how he ought not to sell the gift, that a favour does not endure being sold, that those who have sold gifts are unjust, that one does not justly sell what is for sale and benefactions alike. Let a garment and a treasure be sold in the market, but let benefaction remain unsold, given freely to the needy by greatness of mind. And we have such an example of the mind: that gifts and benefactions ought not to be sold for great money, but each one’s honour kept, not destroyed beforehand by the giving of money. Having gone through these things, then, we have established that everything lies in the Law, both the removal of vice and the achievement of virtue. And these being sufficient for shame and confusion, let us also give the likeness. For if the Law had nothing equal to the Gospel, the accusation would be of what is unlike. But if there is likeness, why do we quarrel over the likeness, when likeness does not endure quarrelling? The stamp cries out kinship; the likeness signifies brotherhood. They draw the mind to one, cause of all the others and Father of the Saviour. The Law said, “Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.” The Gospel said, “No one is good except one, God.” Paul cried, “One God, from whom are all things.” And the unbegotten and fatherless one is understood from the Law, from the Saviour and from the apostle. And there was an offspring, an offspring from the bosom, and Son of the one who begot him. And again the writings agree: “From the womb before the morning star I begot you,” the Law says; “The only-begotten Son, God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known,” the Gospels narrate. Bosom is spoken by the Gospels and womb by the Law. And a genuine Son, like the one who begot him, from womb and bosom

is proclaimed. And the voice of the Lord bears witness, “This is my Son, the only-begotten and beloved, in whom I am well pleased”; and the psalmist bears witness, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” And it is one voice brought forth then and now, and one who spoke, uttering it then and having spoken it now. And the speaker is not changed. For having uttered such a voice at a late time, he was found to have spoken it beforehand in the Psalms. And there is a command from the Father to the divine powers to serve the Son and give him reverence and worship (for it is written, “And let all the angels of God worship him”), and Paul agreed with the command, or rather works it out, interprets it, and is eager to become the interpreter of what was said and written beforehand. “For when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship him.’” And you will see the apostle eager to interpret the old things and explain what is in the Law, not neglecting it, but at one time saying, “He has put all things in subjection under his feet,” and at once explaining, “But when it says that all things have been put in subjection, it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection to him; he left nothing not subject to him, so that God may be all in all”; and at another time saying, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother. This mystery is great; but I speak with reference to Christ and the church.” The apostles are interpreters of the old things, and the old things agree with the new. But those who are apostles interpret, and those who are not apostles slander. For not doing what the apostles do, but fighting what they wrote, they falsely claim the apostleship, being false prophets. For see, the teachers of truth, having honoured the Law, explained the Law; but these, having slandered the Law, brawl with the Law and with those who explained the Law. The apostles know the likeness of the Gospel and the Law as equal, and taking the Law see the Gospel, and looking into the Gospel do not abolish the Law; but these, thinking like things always unlike, and confessing as unfriendly and irreconcilable what is friendly and akin to each other, do not escape the conviction of evil; and being eager to separate and divide like things, but unable to divide them, since the Law does not endure being divided from the Gospel, they reaped the penalty of their own malice.

For see, whatever is in the Law about the Father lies also in the Gospels; whatever about the Son is said in both; whatever about the Holy Spirit we can find in both. For neither writing fails to mention the Holy Spirit; but in the Gospel there is the gift, and there the request. At one time David says, “Do not take your Holy Spirit from me,” at another the Gospel, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” so that what the one has may not be taken away, and what this one grants he may have by receiving. And souls are honoured by the company of the Holy Spirit, neither torn from the company nor continuing without it. And one could work out the likeness of the Law and the Gospel concerning angels and archangels and the other powers, and concerning man and earth and the other creatures, and, tracking it so, reach even to the least things. But we decline so great a mass, using only the theme, and calling on lovers of learning who have grasped the theme to go on to all the points of study. But what the heretics blame with some accusation, let us add this alone to the discourse, so that we may both resolve their charge and look into the dispositions of the Law. For if they, reading the reason of the writings, use an insulting mouth, let us both put their folly to shame by the likeness and not decline to set out the reason. For they accuse the old Law of being harsh and cruel; they accuse the old servants too of being more severe, inclined to punishment rather than affection, and free of mercy, not understanding what is written, “Mercy and judgement I will sing to you, O Lord,” nor knowing that the perfection of the economy hangs on mercy and rebuke; and for this reason, dim-sighted, they are silent about the compassions of the Law, but remember the rebukes and cry them up and down. “Do you not see,” he says, “that because children mocked Elisha he cursed them and gave the infants over to two bears, providing the children as food and a feast for the bears? Do you not see,” he says, “that because some soldiers were sent against their will by the one commanding them to summon Elijah, he hesitated to go and refused to come, but brought down fire and consumed and destroyed the men, saying, ‘If I am a man of God, fire will come down from heaven and consume you and your

fifty.’” And since they place such reasons and such rebukes in the rank of wickedness and evil, what will they say about Paul? He, when he saw the man called Bar-Jesus, the magician, in the presence of Sergius Paulus the proconsul, turning the mind of those being taught by evil arts of speech, did not bear it, rebuked him, brought about the loss of his eyes, and cried, “You full of all deceit and all villainy, son of the devil, will you not stop making crooked the straight ways of the Lord? And behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.” And what will they say about Peter? When Ananias and Sapphira sold a little property and kept back part, and brought part, he judged and convicted them, showed Ananias dead, and gave Sapphira over to the same tomb. They lay dead, destroyed by a word. There the fire brought down consumed those who came; here a word went forth and before the eyes of the disciples showed dead those who had peddled the faith. There Elisha gave the bodies of the infants to beasts; here Paul took away the sight of the eyes and made the seeing man blind. And doing such things they administered rebukes. If, then, rebuke is applied for improper things, Peter and Paul are improper; but if they are good because they are apostles, and good because they rebuked, why do you slander rebukes, when the apostles too used rebukes? If we accept the apostles but blame the rebukes, it is not by persons that the laws judge matters or give sentence; they do not quibble over persons, but go along with the likeness of deeds. “But,” he says, “the Son is merciful, merciful is the one who wrote the Gospels, and the merciful one is offspring of the merciful. But the Law is harsh, not pardoning sinners, while the Gospel has compassion, restraining offences and proclaiming repentance. For see,” they will say, “the Saviour spared Peter when he denied, restores one who committed so great a sin, and showed simple love for mankind, leaving the man as an example to all life, so as to present him as an image of his own love for mankind.” What then of the Law? Is it at a loss for imitation, without a corresponding image? Was Peter, earnest yet fallen, honoured with forgiveness and pardon, while no one in the Law who sinned, and sinned greatly, won forgiveness by repentance? If they do not know, we shall say what is written: “Have mercy

on me, O God, according to your great mercy, and according to the multitude of your compassions blot out my lawlessness. Wash me thoroughly from my lawlessness, and cleanse me from my sin. Against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil before you.” If they know it, they keep silent in their evil talk. The matters, then, are akin, and the images alike: here Peter, there the sacred psalmist, so that the falls of great men are healed by great pardons too, and for those who have done great wrongs the mercy shown is great as well. If, then, they admire the Gospels because Peter received mercy, let them admire that David too received mercy; and if they find fault that David was forgiven after such things, then on their account Peter will not escape the charge either. The charge will seem to be against David alone, but in effect Peter too will be accused with the same accusation. And if they say that pardon is good, but the pardon of the old Law reached only one, while here there is a multitude of pardon and a sea of forgiveness and a voice that has cried, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” let them read the old Scriptures and take wonder at what is written. And if through lack of study they do not endure to meet the writings, let them be freed from this charge here too. The Saviour says, “Come, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” passing over no one, leaving no one out, embracing all. And the sacred psalmist says, “All nations, clap your hands”; and again, “Give ear, all who inhabit the world, both earth-born and sons of men, rich and poor together.” All are moved by the Gospel, all by the Law. The Gospel has left out no one; the Law has let go no one. The Gospel cried, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” He addressed this word to all; he spoke with those who stumble, conversed with those who have fallen, spoke to those already owing death, and through the proclamation betrothed them beforehand to freedom. Jonah too came to Nineveh, a city not small, a populous nation. He showed the threat, did not keep silent about the rebuke, cried out with a striking word, saw the men, brought them to change, made them free of sin; the rebuke announced beforehand departed, mercy took its place, what was sought came about. For what was sought was not the destruction of men, but the change of their ways. And since what was sought came about and the

men had changed, the gift of the lover of mankind appeared; the judge cried out in their defence and said to his servant, “If you spared the gourd, for which you did not labour, which came in a night and perished in a night, shall I not spare Nineveh, the great city, in which more than twelve myriads of men live, and many cattle?” And God was of sparing, and the speaker was plain: the one who said this now, and who cried in another prophet, “I do not desire the death of the sinner so much as that he turn and live”; the one glorified by those who know how to sing hymns: “Compassionate and merciful is the Lord, long-suffering and abounding in mercy.” For so great a sea of compassions is with God that he does not leave unhonoured even the least and shortest inclination to repentance, even of the very worst. For when Ahab had driven almost to the limit of evil and was somehow a little pricked to the heart, God honoured it, showed the matter to his servant, and drew back the threat, leaving a time before the rebuke. “Have you seen,” he says, “how Ahab was pricked to the heart? I will not bring the evils in his days, but in other days”: so that God might honour with fitting honour even the least drop of repentance. Having said this much, we have stopped here, so that the discourse about the Law too may not be left wholly unexercised, adding only this: that “the law is a shadow of the good things to come.” For a tutor works with the child in youth until the teacher, taking over his state, hands him on to the greater lessons. Another could more opportunely, making this his own subject, establish how “the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came from the Lord.” But let us take up the other attempts of the abortion, setting out his other absurd opinion about the oracles and laying it bare by examination, so that (if it is possible) we may remove from the minds they have captured that irrational opinion. For he stretched himself even to creation, and wants this visible work to be the work of the deceiver, and man to be a fashioning of the wicked one, the soul being from God but fitted by the wicked one; and that man came to be, receiving the substance of the body from the substance of the wicked one, while the substance of the soul was taken from God as spoil or booty, plundered by the wicked one. So from the plundered

substance and the substance of the wicked one man came to be, of soul and body; and the wicked one is not the cause of the soul, nor did he make the substance of the soul, but is active only in its insertion into the body. For having plundered it, they say, he inserted it into the flesh; and the flesh itself, its fashioning, its stamp, this particular form and its whole substance, are the work and fashioning of the deceiver. Confessing, then, that man came to be from opposites, they know neither the account of opposites nor that there are some opposites which are unmixed in themselves, unable to receive any mixture and communion with each other, but by supposed communion are causes of each other’s destruction, unable to be together, one being destroyed by the other’s mastery. For see, in one bedroom day and night could not be found, since light alone, once found, removes the darkness beforehand. See, in one soul self-control and sexual immorality could not appear, since self-control alone, once it appears, puts sexual immorality out of the way. See, piety and impiety could not arise in one man; for where piety appears, not a drop of impiety can appear. And the apostle decides and seals what has been said: “What communion has light with darkness? What portion has Christ with Belial?” For things opposite to each other could not become friends to each other, and things standing apart from each other would not make one harmony. For one harmony does not come from rhythm and lack of rhythm, nor one composition from silence and speech; for only one must exist, the other not enduring to subsist. But if the body was the wicked one’s and the soul God’s, how has it been rendered into the one harmony of man? How into one disposition and friendship? For see, he has been fitted together and has become one man, and is one by harmony. See, the soul is the body’s and loves and cherishes it: “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” And if one cares for the other, and the soul thinks the body’s pain its own pain and is not separated from its sufferings, but makes the wounds its own, makes the sufferings its own, and when it suffers pain is grieved because of the wounds, unable to be without pain, and when it enjoys pleasure is stirred by the pleasure, the soul shares in the motions and joins in the stirrings, and ceases alike and increases likewise; and when the soul ceases from the motions of the passions,

the body too ceases with it and becomes quiet; but when desire is worked up in the soul and the stirrings are worked up, the body too takes pleasure and becomes inflamed; and the stirrings come about equally, and equally the layings aside and failings of the stirrings. But if man were from opposites, and the body the wicked one’s and the soul God’s, first, there would have been no meeting, nor would this long mixture have been accomplished; second, the one would not have accepted the things of the other, but each would have reckoned its own things its own and the other’s things foreign, and neither would the pleasure of bodies have become the pleasure of the soul nor the wounds of bodies the pains of the soul, but each would have taken its share of pleasure and wounds for itself. And how could the devil take from there what was not his own? And how is the soul, not being his but another’s, having no intercourse with this region, but being of another substance and wholly estranged from the substance of the wicked one, among foreign and strange things, bearing the mixture of the body as a bond of the wicked one, bound in what is not its own, and yet making the flesh its own, making it holy, and preparing it for virtue, so that it is made like the better as far as possible? For when the flesh is pure, unsoiled and spotless, when it is holy and dignified, when it has holy speech, right looks, divine movements, what else is this but being made like the better? It is likened to the good and bears the stamp of the better. Let this be said thus; and let us set out a few of the oracles too, so that the setting out of the oracles may bring shame to them and exactness of faith to us. For the Saviour in the Gospel, remembering the fashioning of man and woman and referring the fashioning to his own Father and Maker of all, said: “Having created from the beginning, he made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” And confessing the cause of the definition of body and soul, he knows and confesses the Father, and checks human notions, wishing what has been made to be inseparable and not allowing what has been well fitted together to be separated by human judgement. And in the Gospel, to those who in appearance keep the same care but have neglected the hidden things and the inner

care, he says, “Fools, did not he who made the outside make the inside too?” And if the inside is the soul and the outside the body, and he who made the inside made the soul and he who made the outside made the body, then the maker of the soul would be the maker of the body too; and it is God who makes both, fits and joins them, who has fitted together this most sacred harmony. And the Saviour himself, in his discourses, what care he takes of the body, when he says, “There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; let him who can receive it receive it”! For giving the body this care, preparing it holy, free of passion and of pleasure, cutting back every desire and making it subject to reason, he shows his care for the body and signifies his concern for the flesh. And caring and taking thought, he proclaims by his concern that it is his own, reaching even to the glance, so that the glance, moving at random, may not be filled with filth and stain, but, having a well-ordered movement, may continue fitly. For he says in the Gospel, “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” And he measures the passion in the body together with the heart, and taking care of the glance he makes care of the heart common with it, introducing the passion of the glance as the passion of the heart and setting care of the eyes as care of the mind. For the eye will do harm in no other way than as the mind does harm. For it is not possible for the eye to be perverted while the soul is not perverted; for when the soul sees decently and simply, the eyes will see fittingly. Here, then, passing over improper looking, he brings in holy looking, so that the eyes may look straight and the eyelids nod just things. For he lifts up the eyes, not allowing them to be bent down, but raising and rousing them and preparing them uplifted. That is why, taking great care of bodies, he both wore a body and came into a body. If, then, he did not come in a body, what will they say about the cross, the print of the nails, the print of the spear, the tomb and the burial? And if, refuted by these, they confess that the Saviour took a body, what will they say? Unless they will say that he too was fashioned by the wicked one, and that no longer only the human body is the wicked one’s, but the body of the benefactor too? For they will not refrain from reaching even this notion

and stretching out their tongue against the Saviour. For whoever practises arguing against what belongs to him will sharpen his tongue and argue against him. And the Saviour was washed by baptism in the Jordan, sprinkled with waters: being who? If he did not bear a body or have a body, what have spirits in common with rivers? Which of the angels, what power, what dominion, what principality, what authority went down into a washing and had experience of waters? And if no power or authority or throne went down into waters, the matter needs no inquiry and is clear, and what is sought has become plain. But he came up from the waters, was tempted by the devil, was hungry, was thirsty, sailed, slept, travelled, grew weary, walked, came hungry to the fig tree, and finally was judged and crucified. Who cried these things? Who bore witness to them? Let tongues be silent, let deeds speak. The facts have a mouth; let us no longer send out sound by striking the air. The writings have a mouth: even if we are silent, the facts are not silent; even if we do not speak, the writings do not endure not speaking. Since, then, these things are so, and the deeds are trustworthy, and the accounts of the deeds true, and the powers of the deeds cry out that the Saviour had a body, a mortal body, and wore a body for our sake, it remains to seek the like: he came for us, the maker of that body and the maker of ours. For if it were different, he would not have taken thought for others than that; but if it was made by God, and made for us, he made it for his own. For in order to save his own, he made that body, working by its making the freedom of all his own. Thanks, then, to the one who made our bodies, who took thought for them even when they had grown careless, and sent his own Son in a body, and gave a pledge to our bodies, so that we may no longer bend and look to the ground, but be uplifted by the communion of bodies. Let us, then, cheapen those deceivers in this too, because they have marched against bodies, gone against the Fashioner, stretched out their tongue against God’s economy and not refused to speak against our freedom, being some vagrants and market-loungers who have gathered a heap of words of wickedness. For one may blame one thing that is joined to another, but not, going through all things in order, think all useless and outlandish. That is why we too, into everything …

… going down to their account, let us not give great length to the discourse. Let us stop here, having pointed to the rest through these few things and established the refutation through what has been said. The earnest need care, so that, rising above every sorcery, they may keep their ears unseized by wickedness, so as to be keepers of the keys of their own ears, sometimes opening, when the true word knocks, and sometimes shutting, when the false and deceitful word, putting on the appearance of truth, is eager to burst into the storeroom of the mind. For many, counterfeit and putting on a show, knock at the ears (saying, “I am the Christ”), and will lead many astray. But there is one Christ alone, the liberator, the bearer of trophies, the benefactor, who knocks with goodwill, who betroths freedom by his entrance, who at the moment of entering drives out sins, who at his entrance gives friendship with the Father, who at once by his entrance trophies …