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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

20.

We do not turn the sacrifices of the Gentiles into love-feasts, as Faustus says we do. Our love-feasts are rather a substitute for the sacrifice spoken of by the Lord, in the words already quoted: "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." At our love-feasts the poor obtain vegetable or animal food; and so the creature of God is used, as far as it is suitable, for the nourishment of man, who is also God's creature. You have been led by lying devils, not in self-denial, but in blasphemous error, "to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." ¹ In return for the bounties of the Creator, you ungratefully insult Him with your impiety; and because in our love-feasts flesh is often given to the poor, you compare Christian charity to Pagan sacrifices. This indeed, is another point in which you resemble some Pagans. You consider it a crime to kill animals, because you think that the souls of men pass into them; which is an idea found in the writings of some Gentile philosophers, although their successors appear to have thought differently. But here again you are most in error: for they dreaded slaughtering a relative in the animal; but you dread the slaughter of your god, for you hold even the souls of animals to be his members.

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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

20.

Nec sacrificia eorum vertimus in agapes, sed sacrificium illud, quod paulo ante commemoravi, intelleximus dicente domino: Misericordiam volo quam sacrificium. Agapes enim nostrae pauperes pascunt sive frugibus sive carnibus; pascitur enim creatura dei de creatura dei, quae hominis dapibus congrua est. Vobis autem quia daemonia mendaciloqua persuaserunt non ad regendam carnem, sed ad exercendam blasphemiam abstinere a cibis, quos deus creavit ad percipiendum cum gratiarum actione fidelibus et his, qui cognoverunt veritatem, quoniam omnis creatura dei bona est, et nihil abiciendum, quod cum gratiarum actione percipitur, p. 561,6 ingrati creatori et pro largis eius beneficiis sacrilegas retribuentes iniurias, quoniam plerumque in agapibus etiam carnes pauperibus erogantur, misericordiam christianorum similem dicitis sacrificiis paganorum, quorum nonnullis in hoc quoque similes estis: Propterea enim nefas habetis pecora occidi, quia humanas animas in ea revolvi arbitramini, quod in quorundam gentilium philosophorum libris invenitur, quamquam a posterioribus aliter intellectum esse dicatur. Verum in hoc etiam multo deterius erratis; illi enim in pecore timuerunt trucidare proximum suum, vos autem deum vestrum, cuius membra esse etiam pecorum animas arbitramini. p. 561,18