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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

16.

Had they not the charity to feel a kindly sympathy for those who were doomed to suffer eternal punishment, without having committed any sin? These souls that were to be bound up with the mass, were not they too part of your god? Were they not of the same origin, the same substance? They at least must have felt grief or fear in the prospect of their own eternal bondage. To say that they did not know what was to happen, while the others did, is to make one and the same substance partly acquainted with the future, and partly ignorant. How can you call this substance the pure, and perfect, and supreme good, if there were such evils in it, even before its mixture with the evil principle? You will have to confess your two principles either both good or both evil. If you make two evils, you may make either of them the worse, as you please. But if you make two goods, we shall have to inquire which you make the better. Meanwhile there is an end to your doctrine of two principles, one good and the other evil, which are in fact two gods, one good and the other evil. But if hurting another is evil, they both hurt one another. Perhaps the greater evil was in the principle that first began the attack. But if one began the injury, the other returned it; and not by the law of compensation, an eye for an eye, which you are foolish enough to find fault with, but with far greater severity. You must choose which you will call the worse,--the one that began the injury, or the one that had the will and the power to do still greater injury. The one tried to get a share in the enjoyment of light; the other effected the entire overthrow of its opponent. If the one had got what it desired, it would certainly have done no harm to itself. But the other, in the discomfiture of its adversary, did great mischief to part of itself; reminding us of the well-known passionate exclamation, which is on record as having been actually used, "Perish our friends, if that will rid us of our enemies." ¹ For part of your god was sent to suffer hopeless contamination, that there might be a covering for the mass in which the enemy is to be buried for ever alive. So much will he continue to be dreaded even when conquered and bound, that the security, such as it is, of one part of the deity must be purchased by the eternal misery of the other parts. Such is the harmlessness of the good principle! Your god, it appears, is guilty of the crime with which you charge the race of darkness--of injuring both friends and enemies. The charge is proved in the case of your god, by that final mass in which his enemies are confined, while his own subjects are involved in it. In fact, the principle that you call god is the more injurious of the two, both to friends and to enemies. In the case of Hyle, there was no desire to destroy the opposite kingdom, but only to possess it; and though some of its subjects were put to death by the violence of others, they appeared again in other forms, so that in the alternation of life and death they had intervals of enjoyment in their history. But your god, with all the omnipotence and perfect excellence that you ascribe to him, dooms his enemies to eternal destruction, and his friends to eternal punishment. And the height of insanity is in believing that while internal contest occasions the injury of the members of Hyle, victory brings punishment to the members of God. What means this folly? To use Faustus' comparison of God and Hyle to the antidote and poison, the antidote seems to be more mischievous than the poison. We do not hear of Hyle shutting up God for ever in a mass of darkness, or driving its own members into it; or, which is worst of all, slandering this unfortunate remnant, as an excuse for not effecting its purification. For Manichaeus, in his Fundamental Epistle, says that these souls deserved to be thus punished, because they allowed themselves to be led away from their original brightness, and became enemies of holy light; whereas it was God himself that sent them to lose themselves in the region of darkness, that light might be opposed to light: which was unjust, if he forced them against their will; while, if they went willingly, he is ungrateful in punishing them. These souls can never have been happy, if they were tormented with fear before the conflict, from knowing that they were to become enemies to their original principle, and then in the conflict were hopelessly contaminated, and afterwards eternally condemned. On the other hand, they can never have been divine, if before the conflict they were unaware of what was coming, from want of prescience, and then showed feebleness in the conflict, and suffered misery afterwards. And what is true of them must be true of God, since they are of the same substance. Is there any hope of your seeing the folly of these blasphemies? You attempt, indeed, to vindicate the goodness of God, by asserting that Hyle when shut up is prevented from doing any more injury to itself. Hyle, it seems, is to get some good, when it has no longer any good mixed with it. Perhaps, as God before the conflict had the evil of necessity, when the good was unmixed with evil, so Hyle after the conflict is to have the good of rest, when the evil is unmixed with good. Your principles are thus either two evils, one worse than the other; or two goods, both imperfect, but one better than the other. The better, however, is the more miserable; for if the issue of this great conflict is that the enemy gets some good by the cessation of mutual injuries in Hyle, while God's own subjects suffer the serious evil of being driven into the mass of darkness, we may ask who has got the victory. The poison, we are to understand, is Hyle, where, nevertheless, animal life found a plentiful supply of the means of growth and productiveness; while the antidote is God, who could condemn his own members, but could not restore them. In reality, it is as absurd to call the one Hyle, as it is to call the other God. These are the follies of men who turn to fables because they cannot bear sound doctrine. ²

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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

16.

An ibi caritas non erat, ut nulla esset fraterna compassio pro his utique, quorum peccato nullo praecedente impendebant aeterna supplicia? p. 587,27 Quid illae ipsae animae in globo ligandae? Nonne et ipsae membra dei vestri erant, nonne unum genus et una substantia est? Ipsae saltem praescientes futurum sempiternum vinculum suum nempe timebant, nempe maerebant. Aut si ipsae hoc futurum nesciebant, pars dei vestri provida erat, pars improvida. Quomodo ergo una eademque substantia? Cum ergo tanta mala et ibi fuerint, antequam esset alieni mali commixtio, quid de illo tamquam puro et simplici et summo bono gloriamini? Ergo etiam apud semet ipsas istas duas naturas aut duo bona aut duo mala fateri cogimini. Concedimus vobis, si duo mala dixeritis, ut quod volueritis horum peius dicatis, si autem duo bona, quodlibet horum dicite melius! Erit postea diligentior consideratio, dum tamen vester error ille tollatur, quo dicitis duo principia duarum naturarum, bonae et malae, et plane duos deos, unum bonum et alterum malum. p. 588,15 Iam vero si propterea malum est aliquid, quod alteri nocet, invicem sibi ista nocuerunt, fuerit una pars improbior, quia prior appetivit alienum. Una ergo malum inferre voluit, altera malum pro malo retribuit, et non lege talionis tamquam oculum pro oculo, quod imprudenter et impudenter reprehendere soletis, sed multo gravius. Eligite ergo, quam peiorem dicatis, quae prior nocere voluit, an quae amplius nocere et voluit et potuit. Ista enim pro modo suo luce perfrui concupivit, illa eam funditus eradicavit. p. 589,25 Ista si, quod appetivit, implesset, sibi certe nihil obfuisset; illa vero ut hostilem adversitatem penitus everteret, etiam suae parti graviter nocuit, sicut est illa notissima et quarundam litterarum memoriae commendata furiosa sententia: Pereant amici, dum inimici una intercidant. Missa est enim ad inexpiabilem contaminationem pars dei, ut esset, unde tegeretur globus, quo in aeternum hostis vivus sepeliendus est. Tantum enim timebitur et victus, tantum terrebit inclusus, ut sempiterna miseria partis dei cetero deo tribuat qualemcumque securitatem. O magna innocentia bonitatis! Ecce faciet et deus vester, unde tenebrarum gentem horribiliter accusatis, quod et suis noceat et alienis. p. 589,7 Idipsum omnino in deo vestro arguit ille globus extremus, quo et hostis includitur et civis aff[l !]igitur. Immo vero superat in amplius nocendo et alienis et suis pars illa, quam dicitis deum. Hyle quippe non eradicare alienum regnum voluit, sed tenere; suos autem quosdam etsi ab aliis suis quibusdam consumendo interimebat, in alias tamen formas denuo commutabat, ut moriendo et renascendo saltem per intervalla temporum suae vitae laetitia fruerentur. Deus autem, qualem omnipotentem optimumque describitis, in aeternum et alienos eradicat et suos damnat. Et quod mirabiliore dementia creditur, hyle animalia sua laedit in pugna sua, deus membra sua punit in victoria sua. Quid est, vani homines? p. 589,19 Nempe recordamini verba Fausti de deo tamquam de antidoto et hyle tamquam veneno; ecce plus nocet vestrum antidotum quam venenum. Numquid hyle tam horrendo globo in aeternum vel deum includeret vel sua viscera affigeret? Et quod sceleratius est, calumniatur eisdem reliquiis, ne defecisse videatur, quod eas purgare non potuit. Dicit enim Manichaeus in epistula Fundamenti ideo dignas illas animas fieri tali supplicio, quod errare se a priore lucida sua natura passae sunt et inimicae lumini sancto exstiterunt, cum eas in illum errorem, quo ita tenebrarentur, ut inimica luci lux fieret, ipse miserit, si invitas, iniustus, ut cogeret, si volentes, ingratus, ut damnet. Quae se futuras inimicas origini suae si praescire potuerunt, et ante bellum timore cruciatae et in bello inexpiabiliter maculatae et post bellum in aeternum damnatae, numquam beatae; p. 590,4 si autem praescire non potuerunt, et ante bellum improvidae et in bello invalidae et post bellum miserae, numquam divinae. Et utique quod ipsae, hoc deus secundum unitatem substantiae. Putamusne respicitis quam immaniter blasphematis? Et tamen aliquando volentes quasi defendere bonitatem dei etiam ipsi hyle praestare dicitis aliquid boni, ut inclusa in semet ipsa non saeviat. Habebit ergo aliquid boni, cum ei nullum mixtum erit bonum? An forte sicut deus ante bellum sine commixtione mali habebat necessitatis malum, ita hyle post bellum sine commixtione boni habebit commixtionis bonum? p. 590,14 Dicite ergo duo mala, sed unum altero peius, aut duo non summa bona, sed unum altero melius, ita sane, ut quod est melius hoc dicatis miserius! Nam si illius tanti belli hic erit exitus, ut separata hyle a propria vastatione et dei membris affixis in globo aliquid boni praestetur hostibus et tantum mali infligatur civibus, cogitate, quis vicerit. Sed videlicet venenum est hyle, quae formare, firmare, nutrire, vegetare valuit animalia sua, et antidotum deus, qui damnare potuit, qui[a?] sanare non potuit membra sua. Insani, nec illa est hyle, nec ille deus. Sic delirant (delirent ?), qui sanam doctrinam non sustinentes ad fabulas convertuntur.