Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

⁴ It is a silly falsehood that you have been seduced to another God, who promises abundance of food and the land of Canaan. For you can perceive how the saints of old, who were also your children, were enlightened by these figures which were prophecies of you. Thou needest not regard the poor jest against the stone tablets, for the stony heart of which they were in old times a figure is not in you. For you are an epistle of the apostles, "written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but on the fleshy tables of the heart." Our opponents ignorantly think that these words are in their favor, and that the apostle finds fault with the dispensation of the Old Testament, whereas they are the words of the prophet.

This utterance of the apostles was a fulfillment of the long anterior utterances of the prophet whom the Manichæans reject, for they believe the apostles without understanding them. The prophet says: "I will take away from them the stony heart, and I will give them a heart of flesh." What is this but "Not on tables of stones but on the fleshy tables of the heart"? For by the heart of flesh and the fleshy tables is not meant a carnal understanding: but as flesh feels, whereas a stone cannot, the insensibility of stone signifies an unintelligent heart, and the sensibility of flesh signifies an intelligent heart.

Instead, then, of scoffing at you, they deserve to be ridiculed who say that earth, and wood, and stones have sense, and that their life is more intelligent than animal life. So, not to speak of the truth, even their own fiction obliges them to confess that the law written on tables of stone was purer than their sacred parchments. Or perhaps they prefer sheepskin to stone, because their legends make stones the bones of princes. In any case, the ark of the Old Testament was a cleaner covering for the tables of stone than the goatskin of their manuscripts.

Laugh at these things, while pitying them, to show their falsehood and absurdity. With a heart no longer stony, you can see in these stone tablets a suitableness to that hard-hearted people; and at the same time you can find even there the stone, your Bridegroom, described by Peter as "a living stone, rejected by men, but chosen of God, and precious." To them He was "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense;" but to you, "the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner." This is all explained by Peter, and is quoted from the prophets, with whom these heretics have nothing to do.

Fear not, then, to read these tablets— they are from your Husband; to others the stone was a sign of insensibility, but to you of strength and stability. With the finger of God these tablets were written; with the finger of God your Lord cast out devils; with the finger of God drive away the doctrines of lying devils which sear the conscience. With these tablets you can confound the seducer who calls himself the Paraclete, that he may impose upon you by a sacred name. For on the fiftieth day after the passover the tables were given; and on the fiftieth day after the passion of your Bride-groom— of whom the passover was a type— the finger of God, the Holy Spirit, the promised Paraclete, was given.

Fear not the tablets which convey to you ancient writings now made plain. Only be not under the law, lest fear prevent your fulfilling it; but be under grace, that love, which is the fulfilling of the law, may be in you. For it was in a review of these very tablets that the friend of your Bridegroom said: "For you shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is contained in this word, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love works no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." One table contains the precept of love to God, and the other of love to man. And He who first sent these tablets Himself came to enjoin those precepts on which hang the law and the prophets. In the first precept is the chastity of your espousals; in the second is the unity of your members. In the one you are united to divinity; in the other you gather a society. And these two precepts are identical with the ten, of which three relate to God, and seven to our neighbor.

Such is the chaste tablet in which your Lover and your Beloved of old prefigured to you the new song on a psaltery of ten strings; Himself to be extended on the cross for you, that by sin He might condemn sin in the flesh, and that the righteouness of the law might be fulfilled in you. Such is the conjugal tablet, which may well be hated by the unfaithful wife.