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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

13.

How can Faustus think that we resemble the Manichaeans in attaching sacredness to bread and wine, when they consider it sacrilege to taste wine? They acknowledge their god in the grape, but not in the cup; perhaps they are shocked at his being trampled on and bottled. It is not any bread and wine that we hold sacred as a natural production, as if Christ were confined in corn or in vines, as the Manichaeans fancy, but what is truly consecrated as a symbol. What is not consecrated, though it is bread and wine, is only nourishment or refreshment, with no sacredness about it; although we bless and thank God for every gift, bodily as well as spiritual. According to your notion, Christ is confined in everything you eat, and is released by digestion from the additional confinement of your intestines. So, when you eat, your god suffers; and when you digest, you suffer from his recovery. When he fills you, your gain is his loss. This might be considered kindness on his part, because he suffers in you for your benefit, were it not that he gains freedom by escaping and leaving you empty. There is not the least resemblance between our reverence for the bread and wine, and your doctrines, which have no truth in them. To compare the two is even more foolish than to say, as some do, that in the bread and wine we worship Ceres and Bacchus. I refer to this now, to show where you got your silly idea that our fathers kept the Sabbath in honor of Saturn. For as there is no connection with the worship of the Pagan deities Ceres and Bacchus in our observance of the sacrament of the bread and wine, which you approve so highly that you wish to resemble us in it, so there was no subjection to Saturn in the case of our fathers, who observed the rest of the Sabbath in a manner suitable to prophetic times.

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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

13.

Cur autem arbitretur Faustus parem nobis esse religionem circa panem et calicem, nescio, cum Manichaeis vinum gustare non religio, sed sacrilegium sit. In uva enim agnoscunt deum suum, in cupa nolunt, quasi aliquid eos calcatus et inclusus offenderit. Noster autem panis et calix, non quilibet, - quasi propter Christum in spicis et in sarmentis ligatum, sicut illi desipiunt, - sed certa consecratione - mysticus fit nobis, non nascitur. Proinde quod non ita fit, quamvis sit panis et calix, alimentum est refectionis, non sacramentum religionis, p. 553,2 nisi quod benedicimus gratiasque agimus domino in omni eius munere non solum spiritali, verum etiam corporali. Vobis autem per fabulam vestram in escis omnibus Christus ligatus apponitur adhuc ligandus vestris visceribus solvendusque ructatibus. Nam et cum manducatis, dei vestri defectione vos reficitis, et cum digeritis, illius refectione deficitis. Cum enim vos plenos reddit, resumptio vestra ipsum premit. Quod quidem misericordiae deputaretur, quando aliquid pro vobis patitur in vobis, nisi vos rursus inanes relinqueret, ut a vobis liberatus effugeret. Quomodo ergo comparas panem et calicem nostrum et parem religionem dicis errorem longe a veritate discretum, peius desipiens quam nonnulli, qui nos propter panem et calicem Cererem ac Liberum colere existimant? p. 553,15 Quod ideo commemorandum putavi, ut advertatis, ex qua vanitate veniat etiam illud vestrum, quod propter sabbatum Saturno dicatos fuisse patres nostros putatis. Sicut enim a Cerere et Libero paganorum diis longe absumus, quamvis panis et calicis sacramentum, quod ita laudastis, ut in eo nobis pares esse volueritis, nostro ritu amplectamur, ita patres nostri longe fuerunt a Saturniacis catenis, quamvis pro tempore prophetiae sabbati vacationem observaverint.