Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

⁷ Of necessity these tables are against you, for the second commandment is, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain;" whereas you attribute the vanity of falsehood to Christ Himself, who, to remove the vanity of the fleshly mind, rose in a true body, visible to the bodily eye. So also the third commandment about the rest of the Sabbath is against you, for you are tossed about by a multitude of restless fancies. How these three commandments relate to the love of God, you have neither the power nor the will to understand.

Shamefully headstrong and turbulent, you have reached the height of folly, vanity, and worthlessness; your beauty is spoiled, and your order perished. I know you, for I was once the same. How shall I now teach you that these three precepts relate to the love of God, of whom, and by whom, and in whom are all things? How can you understand this, when your pernicious doctrines prevent you from understanding and from obeying the seven precepts relating to the love of our neighbor, which is the bond of human society?

The first of these precepts is, "Honor your father and mother;" which Paul quotes as the first commandment with promise, and himself repeats the injunction. But you are taught by your doctrine of devils to regard your parents as your enemies, because their union brought you into the bonds of flesh, and laid impure fetters even on your god. The doctrine that the production of children is an evil, directly opposes the next precept, "You shall not commit adultery;" for those who believe this doctrine, in order that their wives may not conceive, are led to commit adultery even in marriage.

They take wives, as the law declares, for the procreation of children; but from this erroneous fear of polluting the substance of the deity, their intercourse with their wives is not of a lawful character; and the production of children, which is the proper end of marriage, they seek to avoid. As the apostle long ago predicted of you, you indeed forbid to marry, for you seek to destroy the purpose of marriage. Your doctrine turns marriage into an adulterous connection, and the bed-chamber into a brothel.

This false doctrine leads in a similar way to the transgression of the commandment, "You shall not kill." For you do not give bread to the hungry, from fear of imprisoning in flesh the member of your God. From fear of fancied murder, you actually commit murder. For if you were to meet a beggar starving for want of food, by the law of God to refuse him food would be murder; while to give food would be murder by the law of Manichæus. Not one commandment in the decalogue do you observe.

If you were to abstain from theft, you would be guilty of allowing bread or food, whatever it might be, to undergo the misery of being devoured by a man of no merit, instead of running off with it to the laboratory of the stomach of your elect; and so by theft saving your god from the imprisonment with which he is threatened, and also from that from which he already suffers. Then, if you are caught in the theft, will you not swear by this god that you are not guilty? For what will he do to you when you say to him, I swore by you falsely, but it was for your benefit; a regard for your honor would have been fatal to you?

So the precept, You shall not bear false witness, will be broken, not only in your testimony, but in your oath, for the sake of the liberation of the members of your god. The commandment, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife," is the only one which your false doctrine does not oblige you to break. But if it is unlawful to covet our neighbor's wife, what must it be to excite covetousness in others? Remember your beautiful gods and goddesses presenting themselves with the purpose of exciting desire in the male and female leaders of darkness, in order that the gratification of this passion might effect the liberation of this god, who is in confinement everywhere, and who requires the assistance of such self-degradation.

The last commandment, "You shall not covet the possessions of your neighbor," it is wholly impossible for you to obey. Does not this god of yours delude you with the promise of making new worlds in a region belonging to another, to be the scene of your imaginary triumph after your imaginary conquest? In the desire for the accomplishment of these wild fancies, while at the same time you believe that this land of darkness is in the closest neighborhood with your own substance, you certainly covet the possessions of your neighbor.

Well indeed may you dislike the tables which contain such good precepts in opposition to your false doctrine. The three relating to the love of God you entirely set aside. The seven by which human society is preserved you keep only from a regard to the opinion of men, or from fear of human laws; or good customs make you averse to some crimes; or you are restrained by the natural principle of not doing to another what you would not have done to yourself. But whether you do what you would not have done to yourself, or refrainest from doing what you would not have done to yourself, you see the opposition of the heresy to the law, whether you act according to it or not.