Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV:
Writings in Connection with the Manichæan Controversy.: Chapter 16

Chapter 16.—Disclosure of the Monstrous Tenets of the Manichæans.

38.  O the obscurity of the nature of things!  How hard to expose falsehood!  Who that hears these things, if he is one who has not learned the causes of things, and who, not yet illuminated by any ray of truth, is deceived by material images, would not think them true, precisely because the things spoken of are invisible, and are presented to the mind under the form of visible things, and can be eloquently expressed?  Men of this description exist in numbers and in droves, who are kept from being led away into these errors p. 80 more by a fear grounded on religious feeling than by reason.  I will therefore endeavor, as God may please to enable me, so to refute these errors, as that their falsehood and absurdity will be manifest not only in the judgment of the wise, who reject them on hearing them, but also to the intelligence of the multitude.

39.  Tell me then, first, where you get the doctrine that part of God, as you call it, exists in corn, beans, cabbage, and flowers and fruits.  From the beauty of the color, say they, and the sweetness of the taste; this is evident; and as these are not found in rotten substances, we learn that their good has been taken from them.  Are they not ashamed to attribute the finding of God to the nose and the palate?  But I pass from this.  For I will speak, using words in their proper sense; and, as the saying is, this is not so easy in speaking to you.  Let us see rather what sort of mind is required to understand this; how, if the presence of good in bodies is shown by their color, the dung of animals, the refuse of flesh itself, has all kinds of bright colors, sometimes white, often golden; and so on, though these are what you take in fruits and flowers as proofs of the presence and indwelling of God.  Why is it that in a rose you hold the red color to be an indication of an abundance of good, while the same color in blood you condemn?  Why do you regard with pleasure in a violet the same color which you turn away from in cases of cholera, or of people with jaundice, or in the excrement of infants?  Why do you believe the light, shining appearance of oil to be a sign of a plentiful admixture of good, which you readily set about purifying by taking the oil into your throats and stomachs, while you are afraid to touch your lips with a drop of fat, though it has the same shining appearance as oil?  Why do you look upon a yellow melon as part of the treasures of God, and not rancid bacon fat or the yolk of an egg?  Why do you think that whiteness in a lettuce proclaims God, and not in milk?  So much for colors, as regards which (to mention nothing else) you cannot compare any flower-clad meadow with the wings and feathers of a single peacock, though these are of flesh and of fleshly origin.

40.  Again, if this good is discovered also by smell, perfumes of excellent smell are made from the flesh of some animals.  And the smell of food, when cooked along with flesh of delicate flavor, is better than if cooked without it.  Once more, if you think that the things that have a better smell than others are therefore cleaner, there is a kind of mud which you ought to take to your meals instead of water from the cistern; for dry earth moistened with rain has an odor most agreeable to the sense, and this sort of mud has a better smell than rain-water taken by itself.  But if we must have the authority of taste to prove the presence in any object of part of God, he must dwell in dates and honey more than in pork, but more in pork than in beans.  I grant that He dwells more in a fig than in a liver; but then you must allow that He is more in liver than in beet.  And, on this principle, must you not confess that some plants, which none of you can doubt to be cleaner than flesh, receive God from this very flesh, if we are to think of God as mixed with the flavor?  For both cabbages taste better when cooked along with flesh; and, while we cannot relish the plants on which cattle feed, when these are turned into milk we think them improved in color, and find them very agreeable to the taste.

41.  Or must we think that good is to be found in greater quantity where the three good qualities—a good color, and smell, and taste—are found together?  Then you must not admire and praise flowers so much, as you cannot admit them to be tried at the tribunal of the palate.  At least you must not prefer purslain to flesh, since flesh when cooked is superior in color, smell, and taste.  A young pig roasted (for your ideas on this subject force us to discuss good and evil with you as if you were cooks and confectioners, instead of men of reading or literary taste) is bright in color, and agreeable in smell, and pleasant in taste.  Here is a perfect evidence of the presence of the divine substance.  You are invited by this threefold testimony, and called on to purify this substance by your sanctity.  Make the attack.  Why do you hold back?  What objection have you to make.  In color alone the excrement of an infant surpasses lentils; in smell alone a roast morsel surpasses a soft green fig; in taste alone a kid when slaughtered surpasses the plant which it fed on when alive:  and we have found a kind of flesh in flavor of which all three give evidence.  What more do you require?  What reply will you make?  Why should eating meat make you unclean, if using such monstrosities in discussion does not?  And, above all, the rays of the sun, which you surely think more of than all animal or vegetable food, have no smell or taste, and are remarkable among other substances only by their eminently bright color; which is a loud call to you, and an obligation, in spite of yourselves, to place nothing higher than a bright color among the evidences of an admixture of good.

p. 81 42.  Thus you are forced into this difficulty, that you must acknowledge the part of God as dwelling more in blood, and in the filthy but bright-colored animal refuse which is thrown out in the streets, than in the pale leaves of the olive.  If you reply, as you actually do, that olive leaves when burnt give out a flame, which proves the presence of light, while flesh when burnt does not, what will you say of oil, which lights nearly all the lamps in Italy?  What of cow dung (which surely is more unclean than the flesh), which peasants use when dry as fuel, so that the fire is always at hand, and the liberation of the smoke is always going on?  And if brightness and lustre prove a greater presence of the divine part, why do you yourselves not purify it, why not appropriate it, why not liberate it?  For it is found chiefly in flowers, not to speak of blood and countless things almost the same as blood in flesh or coming from it, and yet you cannot feed on flowers.  And even if you were to eat flesh, you would certainly not take with your gruel the scales of fish, or some worms and flies, though these all shine with a light of their own in the dark.

43.  What then remains, but that you should cease saying that you have in your eyes, nose, and palate sufficient means of testing the presence of the divine part in material objects?  And, without these means, how can you tell not only that there is a greater part of God in plants than in flesh, but that there is any part in plants at all?  Are you led to think this by their beauty—not the beauty of agreeable color, but that of agreement of parts?  An excellent reason, in my opinion.  For you will never be so bold as to compare twisted pieces of wood with the bodies of animals, which are formed of members answering to one another.  But if you choose the testimony of the senses, as those must do who cannot see with their mind the full force of existence, how do you prove that the substance of good escapes from bodies in course of time, and by some kind of attrition, but because God has gone out of it, according to your view, and has left one place for another?  The whole is absurd.  But, as far as I can judge, there are no marks or appearances to give rise to this opinion.  For many things plucked from trees, or pulled out of the ground, are the better of some interval of time before we use them for food, as leeks and endive, lettuce, grapes, apples, figs, and some pears; and there are many other things which get a better color when they are not used immediately after being plucked, besides being more wholesome for the body, and having a finer flavor to the palate.  But these things should not possess all these excellent and agreeable qualities, if, as you say, they become more destitute of good the longer they are kept after separation from their mother earth.  Animal food itself is better and more fit for use the day after the animal is killed; but this should not be, if, as you hold, it possessed more good immediately after the slaughter than next day, when more of the divine substance had escaped.

44.  Who does not know that wine becomes purer and better by age?  Nor is it, as you think, more tempting to the destruction of the senses, but more useful for invigorating the body,—only let there be moderation, which ought to control everything.  The senses are sooner destroyed by new wine.  When the must has been only a short time in the vat, and has begun to ferment, it makes those who look down into it fall headlong, affecting their brain, so that without assistance they would perish.  And as regards health, every one knows that bodies are swollen up and injuriously distended by new wine?  Has it these bad properties because there is more good in it?  Are they not found in wine when old because a good deal of the divine substance has gone?  An absurd thing to say, especially for you, who prove the divine presence by the pleasing effect produced on your eyes, nose, and palate!  And what a contradiction it is to make wine the poison of the princes of darkness, and yet to eat grapes!  Has it more of the poison when in the cup than when in the cluster?  Or if the evil remains unmixed after the good is gone, and that by the process of time, how is it that the same grapes, when hung up for awhile, become milder, sweeter, and more wholesome? or how does the wine itself, as already mentioned, become purer and brighter when the light has gone, and more wholesome by the loss of the beneficial substance?

45.  What are we to say of wood and leaves, which in course of time become dry, but cannot be the worse on that account in your estimation?  For while they lose that which produces smoke, they retain that from which a bright flame arises; and, to judge by the clearness, which you think so much of, there is more good in the dry than in the green.  Hence you must either deny that there is more of God in the pure light than in the smoky one, which will upset all your evidences; or you must allow it to be possible that, when plants are plucked up, or branches plucked off, and kept for a time, more of the nature of evil may escape from them than p. 82 of the nature of good.  And, on the strength of this, we shall hold that more evil may go off from plucked fruits; and so more good may remain in animal food.  So much on the subject of time.

46.  As for motion, and tossing, and rubbing, if these give the divine nature the opportunity of escaping from these substances, many things of the same kind are against you, which are improved by motion.  In some grains the juice resembles wine, and is excellent when moved about.  Indeed, as must not be overlooked, this kind of drink produces intoxication rapidly; and yet you never called the juice of grain the poison of the princes of darkness.  There is a preparation of water, thickened with a little meal, which is the better of being shaken, and, strange to say, is lighter in color when the light is gone.  The pastry cook stirs honey for a long time to give it this light color, and to make its sweetness milder and less unwholesome:  you must explain how this can come from the loss of good.  Again, if you prefer to test the presence of God by the agreeable effects on the hearing, and not sight, or smell, or taste, harps get their strings and pipes their bones from animals; and these become musical by being dried, and rubbed, and twisted.  So the pleasures of music, which you hold to have come from the divine kingdom, are obtained from the refuse of dead animals, and that, too, when they are dried by time, and lessened by rubbing, and stretched by twisting.  Such rough treatment, according to you, drives the divine substance from living objects; even cooking them, you say, does this.  Why then are boiled thistles not unwholesome?  Is it because God, or part of God, leaves them when they are cooked?

47.  Why mention all the particulars, when it is difficult to enumerate them?  Nor is it necessary; for every one knows how many things are sweeter and more wholesome when cooked.  This ought not to be, if, as you suppose, things lose the good by being thus moved about.  I do not suppose that you will find any proof from your bodily senses that flesh is unclean, and defiles the souls of those who eat it, because fruits, when plucked and shaken about in various ways, become flesh; especially as you hold that vinegar, in its age and fermentation, is cleaner than wine, and the mead you drink is nothing else than cooked wine, which ought to be more impure than wine, if material things lose the divine members by being moved about and cooked.  But if not, you have no reason to think that fruits, when plucked, kept, handled, cooked, and digested, are forsaken by the good, and therefore supply most unclean matter for the formation of bodies.

48.  But if it is not from their color and appearance, and smell and taste, that you think the good to be in these things, what else can you bring forward?  Do you prove it from the strength and vigor which those things seem to lose when they are separated from the earth and put to use?  If this is your reason (though its erroneousness is seen at once, from the fact that the strength of some things is increased after their separation from the earth, as in the case already mentioned of wine, which becomes stronger from age),—if the strength, then, is your reason, it would follow that the part of God is to be found in no food more abundantly than in flesh.  For athletes, who especially require vigor and energy, are not in the habit of feeding on cabbage and fruit without animal food.

49.  Is your reason for thinking the bodies of trees better than our bodies, that flesh is nourished by trees and not trees by flesh.  You forget the obvious fact that plants, when manured with dung, become richer and more fertile and crops heavier, though you think it your gravest charge against flesh that it is the abode of dung.  This then gives nourishment to things you consider clean, though it is, according to you, the most unclean part of what you consider unclean.  But if you dislike flesh because it springs from sexual intercourse, you should be pleased with the flesh of worms, which are bred in such numbers, and of such a size, in fruits, in wood, and in the earth itself, without any sexual intercourse.  But there is some insincerity in this.  For if you were displeased with flesh because it is formed from the cohabitation of father and mother, you would not say that those princes of darkness were born from the fruits of their own trees; for no doubt you think worse of these princes than of flesh, which you refuse to eat.

50.  Your idea that all the souls of animals come from the food of their parents, from which confinement you pretend to liberate the divine substance which is held bound in your viands, is quite inconsistent with your abstinence from flesh, and makes it a pressing duty for you to eat animal food.  For if souls are bound in the body by those who eat animal food, why do you not secure their liberation by being beforehand in eating the food?  You reply, it is not from the animal food that the good part comes which those people bring into bondage, but from the vegetables which they take with their meat.  What will you say then of the souls of lions, who feed only on flesh?  They drink, is the reply, and so p. 83 the soul is drawn in from the water and confined in flesh.  But what of birds without number?  What of eagles, which eat only flesh, and need no drink?  Here you are at a loss, and can find no answer.  For if the soul comes from food, and there are animals which neither drink anything nor have any food but flesh, and yet bring forth young, there must be some soul in flesh; and you are bound to try your plan of purifying it by eating the flesh.  Or will you say that a pig has a soul of light, because it eats vegetables, and drinks water; and that the eagle, because it eats only flesh, has a soul of darkness, though it is so fond of the sun? 180

51.  What a confusion of ideas!  What amazing fatuity!  All this you would have escaped, if you had rejected idle fictions, and had followed what truth sanctions in abstinence from food, which would have taught you that sumptuous eating is to be avoided, not to escape pollution, as there is nothing of the kind, but to subdue the sensual appetite.  For should any one, from inattention to the nature of things, and the properties of the soul and body, allow that the soul is polluted by animal food, you will admit that it is much much more defiled by sensuality.  Is it reasonable, then, or rather, is it not most unreasonable, to expel from the number of the elect a man who, perhaps for his health’s sake, takes some animal food without sensual appetite; while, if a man eagerly devours peppered truffles, you can only reprove him for excess, but cannot condemn him as abusing your symbol?  So one who has been induced, not by sensuality, but for health, to eat part of a fowl, cannot remain among your elect; though one may remain who has yielded voluntarily to an excessive appetite for comfits and cakes without animal matter.  You retain the man plunged in the defilements of sensuality, and dismiss the man polluted, as you think, by the mere food; though you allow that the defilement of sensuality is far greater than that of meat.  You keep hold of one who gloats with delight over highly-seasoned vegetables, unable to keep possession of himself; while you shut out one who, to satisfy hunger, takes whatever comes, if suitable for nourishment, ready either to use the food, or to let it go.  Admirable customs!  Excellent morals!  Notable temperance!

52.  Again, the notion that it is unlawful for any one but the elect to touch as food what is brought to your meals for what you call purification, leads to shameful and sometimes to criminal practices.  For sometimes so much is brought that it cannot easily be eaten up by a few; and as it is considered sacrilege to give what is left to others, or, at least, to throw it away, you are obliged to eat to excess, from the desire to purify, as you call it, all that is given.  Then, when you are full almost to bursting, you cruelly use force in making the boys of your sect eat the rest.  So it was charged against some one at Rome that he killed some poor children, by compelling them to eat for this superstitious reason.  This I should not believe, did I not know how sinful you consider it to give this food to those who are not elect, or, at any rate, to throw it away.  So the only way is to eat it; and this leads every day to gluttony, and may sometimes lead to murder.

53.  For the same reason you forbid giving bread to beggars.  By way of showing compassion, or rather of avoiding reproach, you advise to give money.  The cruelty of this is equalled by its stupidity.  For suppose a place where food cannot be purchased:  the beggar will die of starvation, while you, in your wisdom and benevolence, have more mercy on a cucumber than on a human being!  This is in truth (for how could it be better designated) pretended compassion, and real cruelty.  Then observe the stupidity.  What if the beggar buys bread for himself with the money you give him?  Will the divine part, as you call it, not suffer the same in him when he buys the food as it would have suffered if he had taken it as a gift from you?  So this sinful beggar plunges in corruption part of God eager to escape, and is aided in this crime by your money!  But you in your great sagacity think it enough that you do not give to one about to commit murder a man to kill, though you knowingly give him money to procure somebody to be killed.  Can any madness go beyond this?  The result is, that either the man dies if he cannot get food for his money, or the food itself dies if he gets it.  The one is true murder; the other what you call murder:  though in both cases you incur the guilt of real murder.  Again, there is the greatest folly and absurdity in allowing your followers to eat animal food, while you forbid them to kill animals.  If this food does not defile, take it yourselves.  If it defiles, what can be more unreasonable than to think it more sinful to separate the soul of a pig from its body than to defile the soul of a man with the pig’s flesh.

Footnotes

[Much of the foregoing, as well as of what follows, seems to the modern reader like mere trifling, but Augustin’s aim was by introducing many familiar illustrations to show the utter absurdity of the Manichæan distinctions between clean and unclean.  It must be confessed that he does this very effectively.—A.H.N.]