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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

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Faustus dixit: Quare non accipis vetus testamentum? Si apostolis licuit sub eodem natis ab eo discedere, mihi quare non liceat, in quo natus non sum, non usurpare? p.307,21 Omnes quippe gentiles nascimur, non Iudaei, non denique Christiani. Sed alios ad se ex eadem gentilitate testamentum vetus adducit facitque Iudaeos, alios novum et initiat christianos, tamquam si duae arbores, dulcis et amara, radicibus suis unius terrae in se vim transferant mutandam qualitatibus suis. Apostolis ergo in dulcem transeuntibus ex amaro, quam demens ero ego, si in amarum convertar ex dulci?

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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

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Faustus said: Another reason for not receiving the Old Testament is, that if it was allowable for the apostles, who were born under it, to abandon it, much more may I, who was not born under it, be excused for not thrusting myself into it. We Gentiles are not born Jews, nor Christians either. Out of the same Gentile world some are induced by the Old Testament to become Jews, and some by the New Testament to become Christians. It is as if two trees, a sweet and a bitter, drew from one soil the sap which each assimilates to its own nature. The apostle passed from the bitter to the sweet; it would be madness in me to change from the sweet to the bitter.