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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

6.

It is remarkable how, amid his wild irrelevancies, this wretched trifler loses no available opportunity of darkening the declarations of Scripture by the fabulous creations of his own fancy. Thus he says of Abraham, that when he took his handmaid to wife he disbelieved God's promise that he should have a child by Sarah; whereas, in fact, this promise had not at that time been given. Then he accuses Abraham of falsehood in calling Sarah his sister, not having read what may be learned on the authority of Scripture about the family of Sarah. Abraham's son Isaac also he accuses of falsely calling his wife his sister, though a distinct account is given of her family. Then he accuses Jacob of there being a daily quarrel among his four wives, which should be the first to appropriate him on his return from the field, while nothing of this is said in Scripture. And this is the man who pretends to hate the writers of the sacred books for their falsehood, and who has the effrontery so to misrepresent even the gospel record, though its authority is admitted by all as possessing the most abundant confirmation, as to try to make it appear, not indeed that Matthew himself,--for in that case he would have been forced to yield to apostolic authority,--but that some one under the name of Matthew, has written about Christ what he refuses to believe, and attempts to refute with a contumelious ingenuity!

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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

6.

Hunc sane miserum delire garrulum debemus intueri atque observare non praetermittentem, ubi potuerit, lectori vaniloquiorum suorum etiam de scripturarum testimoniis nebulas offundere falsitatis: p. 711,23 - sicut de Abraham dixit, quod deo non crediderat de Sara sibi filium promittenti, quando cum ancilla concubuit, cum scriptura testetur nondum illi partum Sarae fuisse promissum; - vel quod uxorem suam sororem mentitus sit, cum genus Sarae nusquam in illis litteris legerit, quibus de hac re fides habenda est; - et de filio eius Isaac, quod etiam ipse Rebeccam falso dixerit sororem suam, cum genus eius ibi aperte scriptum sit; - et de Iacob, quod cotidie certamen esset inter quattuor eius uxores, quaenam illum de agro venientem prior ad concubitum raperet, quod illic omnino nusquam legisse convincitur. Ecce qualis homo mendaces divinorum librorum scriptores se odisse gloriatur, qui etiam de evangelio tantae auctoritatis culmine omnibus noto mentiri sic audet, ut non Matthaeum, ne apostolici nominis pondere comprimatur, sed nescio quem alium sub Matthaei nomine velit putari scripsisse de Christo, quod non vult credere et quod calumniosa versutia refutare conatur. p. 712,12