Heresy I, Of the Old Testament in General

OF THE OLD TESTAMENT in general — Heresy I (De Veteri Testamento in universali. Haeresis I)

To cast away the whole Old Testament — [as] made for the Jews alone, founded by the evil God of the Jews, and augmented by his followers with fabricated narrations; of no profit in any part to the Christian faith; noxious moreover to good morals; and contrary to the evangelical doctrine.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

The first authors of this prodigious and abominable heresy were those, whosoever they were, that introduced two Gods: one, namely, of the Hebrews, evil and false; the other, of the Christians, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, good and true. Of whom the chief (Epiphanius being witness) was Simon Magus the Samaritan, the first heretic after the ascension of Christ, who taught that the old testament — namely the law and the prophets — was put forth by a sinister power (virtus) and by evil angels. ¹ To whom, in the same error, there succeeded Basilides, Carpocras, the Valentinians (so printed “Valerini”), who are also [called] Gnostics, the Ptolemaeans, the Heracleonites, the Cainites (Caiani), the Archontics, the Cerdonians, the Marcionists, the Apelleians, and the Severians — who by the same assent cast away the old testament, either wholly (ex integro) or in part. ² After [these] others, in the times of the Emperor Aurelian, a certain Persian named Cubricus, surnamed Manes, so exalted this heresy — [which had] somewhat subsided — that his name has almost remained upon it. ³ Then his disciples, who for honor’s sake called their teacher MANICHAEVS — that is, the pourer-out of manna (mannae effusor) — having sent forth the pernicious books of the same error, spread the now-famous heresy more widely over the whole world. Of their number the more eminent were a certain Addas, surnamed Adimantus, a disciple of Manichaeus while he was yet living; and, many years after him, Faustus the African, a Milevitan by fatherland; and a certain unnamed disciple of Fabritius, far worse than the Manichaeans of old — fragments of whose volumes are still preserved in the books of Augustine among the confutations of the Manichaeans. ⁴ There were also, as Augustine relates, certain Patrician heretics, named from a certain Patricius, who subscribed to the same heresy. After whom, through many ages of years, the Bogomil heretics of the Bulgarian nation, and at last the Albanenses [the Albanensian Cathars], called this same error — buried [as it had been] through so long a length of times — back again into the light. ⁵ And these are they who thought that the whole old testament was to be rejected wholly.

IMPVGNATIO [The Refutation]

The present assertion of the heretics comprises five detestable and blasphemous propositions, which we shall endeavor to destroy in order, with as much brevity as may be.

Proposition the first. The first proposition is: THAT THE WHOLE OLD TESTAMENT IS FROM THE EVIL GOD OF THE HEBREWS, WHO IS THE DEVIL. And it is destroyed

(printed p. 620)

And moreover this execrable opinion is destroyed by the testimonies of the new testament, which make one and the same God the author of each testament. For Paul, saying that Abraham had two sons — one of the handmaid, and the other of the free woman, which by allegory signify the two testaments — shows that, just as there are two women and one man, so also there are two testaments, and one God, who bequeathed both. ⁶ And the same Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, making a mutual comparison of the two testaments, calls the one new and the other old; and says that the new was confirmed by its own testator, unto the imitation and completion of the old, in blood, through the death of Christ — so that, his death intervening for the redemption of the transgressions which were under the old testament, we might receive the promises (repromissiones) which were signified in it. ⁷ Therefore, unless Christ, the mediator of the new testament, had seen that the old testament was from the good God, he would by no means have completed it by imitating it. But he imitated it for this reason: because, as he himself says in the Gospel: “Whatsoever the son seeth the father do, this the son also doeth in like manner.” ⁸ And that the same God spoke in each testament, the same Paul everywhere openly teaches, saying: “Paul, an Apostle, set apart unto the Gospel of God, which he had before promised by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son.” ⁹ And again: “In many ways (multifarie) and in many manners God, of old speaking to the fathers in the prophets, hath last of all spoken to us in [his] son.” ¹⁰ And elsewhere: “Having the same spirit of faith, as it is written: I believed, for which cause I have spoken” — intimating by this that both testaments were inspired by the same spirit. ¹¹ And Zacharias testifies that he is the same God of Israel who spoke in the old testament by the mouth of the holy prophets, and who in the new testament visited and wrought the redemption of his people; ¹² with whom Mary, consenting in her Canticle, sings: “He hath received [taken up] Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy: as he spoke to our fathers, Abraham, and to his seed for ever.” ¹³ And lest we should perchance believe that there had been some prophet in whom God did not speak, therefore Peter added: “God, who by the mouth of all the prophets foretold that his Christ should suffer, hath so fulfilled it.” ¹⁴ To which testimonies this demonstration also is joined: since the Mosaic law — on which the whole old testament depends — was founded by its author for this reason, that it might lead its cultivators to Christ as to the end of the law, Paul saying: “The end of the law is Christ”; ¹⁵ and, “The law was our pedagogue in Christ.” ¹⁶ How can it be that that evil God of the Manichaeans, the perpetual enemy of our Lord Jesus Christ, should have promulgated the law and the testament by whose leading his followers were led to the worship of Christ — by whom he himself was to be cast out of [his] kingdom, Christ saying: “The prince of this world shall be cast forth”? ¹⁷ The one and only author, therefore, of both testaments is God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁸

Proposition the second. The second proposition is: THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT PERTAINS NOT TO CHRISTIANS, BUT TO THE JEWS ALONE ONLY. The absurdity of this is caught from this: that a testament pertains to those to whom the gifts and promises of the testament pertain, and who fulfill the conditions of the testament. But it is certain both that the conditions of the old testament are not kept by those who are Jews according to the flesh only, and that the promises of that same testament were not made on account of such [men]; but on account of the true Israelites, content with the promise of the seed of Abraham — that is, on account of those who believe in Christ, who is the sum and end of all the promises of the old testament, Paul saying: “For however many are the promises of God, in him they are [yea].” ¹⁹ And again: “I say that Christ was a minister of the circumcision, for the confirming of the promises of the fathers” — which promises, indeed, pertain not to those who are only of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, ²⁰ but to those, as Paul says, who are the sons of the promise of Abraham, and are reckoned in the seed of Isaac, of whom it was said: “In Isaac shall thy seed be called” — who is Christ. ²¹ For to Abraham, as the same Apostle writes to the Galatians, were the promises made, and to his seed. He saith not, “and to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “and to thy seed,” which is Christ. ²² Concerning whose salvation, as Peter says, all the prophets searched and inquired, who prophesied of the grace to come upon us. ²³ And that not only the promises of the old testament, but also all its other mysteries, were made on account of us, the heirs of these promises — that we might be rendered fit for obtaining them — Paul, to the Corinthians, openly expressed in these words: “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized in Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank of the spiritual [rock] that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Now these things were done in a figure of us.” ²⁴ And a little after: “All these things happened to them in figure; and they were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” And to the Romans again: “Whatsoever things were written, were written for our instruction, that through patience and consolation we might have hope.” ²⁵ And that the true understanding of the old testament, taken away from the Jews, has passed over to us, the same Apostle testifies, saying: “Even unto this present day the selfsame veil, in the reading of the old testament, remaineth not taken away, which in Christ is made void; but even unto this present day, when Moses is read, the veil is laid upon their heart.” ²⁶ Wherefore, since they themselves neither understand nor keep the will of the testator and the conditions handed down in the testament, it is manifest that that testament pertains to us, who hold Christ, the end of its promises, know the will of the testator, and keep the conditions of the commandments set forth by him.

Proposition the third. The third proposition is: THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT HAS BEEN CONTAMINATED BY THE JEWS WITH FABRICATED NARRATIONS. Against a proposition so wicked and impious all the evangelical and Apostolic scriptures cry out — taking from the old books innumerable testimonies and examples for the confirmation of doctrine, for exhortation, correction, and consola-

(printed p. 621)

[for the confirmation of doctrine, for exhortation, correction, and] consolation of the faithful — not as [drawn] from fabulous [writings], but as from most truthful scriptures, composed at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. To these, as to an uncontaminated fountain of truth, Christ sent those skilled in the law, saying: “Search the scriptures; for they give testimony of me.” ²⁷ To these, as to intact letters of incorrupt faith, he called back his disciples, when — beginning from Moses, and running through the psalms and the prophets — he expounded all the things that were written of him in the old books, and demonstrated them fulfilled in his very self with a most certain outcome. ²⁸ Out of these [scriptures], as out of sincere and inviolate writings, the two evangelists Matthew and Luke briefly gathered the two genealogies of our Lord — the one beginning from Abraham and descending, through the successions of the patriarchs and kings, down to Christ; the other ascending, through the several generations and times of the old testament, up to Adam: to wit, that from a compendium of the histories of the whole old testament, which each genealogy had touched upon, they might signify that the whole sum of the entire ancient scripture is to be received with undoubted certitude. Paul likewise — who gloried that at the feet of Gamaliel he had learned not the fables but the truth of the old testament — confirmed by his own authority very many sayings and deeds of the old instrument, and especially those histories which the Manichaeans deride, in that most brief compendium of the old scripture which he most artfully drew together in the epistle to the Hebrews; ²⁹ where, summarily enumerating almost all the histories of the ancient testament, from the beginning of Genesis down to the last volume of the Maccabees, he says: “By faith we understand that the ages were framed” — and the rest, which throughout that whole chapter he so commemorates that he seems purposely to wish to point out with his finger the deeds of the old testament. ³⁰ I pass over now the innumerable testimonies of the same Apostle, and of the other apostles, upon this matter, lest I heap loathing upon the reader in a thing most well-known, and to which all the letters of the new testament, and the stable and perpetual consensus of the Catholic Church, bear witness. But if anyone desires more for the confirmation of this proposition, let him read what is said by us below, in the confutation of the second heresy.

Proposition the fourth. The fourth proposition asserts: THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS USELESS FOR THE CONFIRMATION OF OUR FAITH, AND ADVERSE TO THE ATTAINING OF GOOD MORALS. Which impiety all the letters of the new testament most openly confute. And first of all Paul professes that the old testament is necessary both for faith and for morals, writing to Timothy in these words: “But thou, continue in the things which thou hast learned and which have been committed to thee — knowing of whom thou hast learned [them], and because from infancy thou hast known the sacred letters, which can instruct thee unto salvation by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. For all scripture, divinely inspired, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice: that the man of God may be perfect, furnished unto every good work.” ³¹ By which words the Apostle shows the old scriptures to be most necessary in two things especially, namely for instructing faith and for forming good morals. For since the whole Christian profession is placed in two things — namely in contemplation, which insinuates faith, and in action, which teaches morals — the Apostle accommodates the scriptures of the old testament to each business. To contemplation, indeed: since, whereas there are two offices of Christian contemplation — that is, to teach truth and to refute falsehood — Paul embraced both, saying: “All scripture is profitable to teach” — namely truth — “and to reprove” — namely falsehood. ³² But to action the old scripture is profitable, because — since two parts complete the whole of action, namely that each one, according to the prophet’s saying, should decline from evil and do good — therefore Paul says that those scriptures are profitable “to correct,” that is, to snatch men away from sins, and “to instruct in justice,” that is, to instruct men in justice and goodness. ³³ Accordingly Christ, seeing how necessary the old scriptures are for the confirmation of faith, when he spoke of himself to those skilled in the law, brought in to them the books of Moses, saying: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.” ³⁴ And when he spoke to his disciples of his passion, he confirmed it from the prophets, saying: “All things shall be accomplished (Consummabuntur) that were spoken by the prophets concerning the son of man.” ³⁵ And when he had risen from the dead, he established almost all the Evangelical truths from the authority of the old books. For when he had given himself as companion to the two disciples going to Emmaus: “Beginning,” says Luke, “from Moses, and running throughout by the prophets, he interpreted to them all the things which were foretold of himself in the old testament.” ³⁶ And again, when — the doors being shut — he had stood in the midst of the disciples, and had offered himself not only to be beheld by the eyes of the disciples but also to be handled by [their] hands: yet, lest they should think that anything was being done deceitfully with their mortal eyes and carnal senses, he strengthened them the more from the testification of the old books, saying: “These are the words which I spoke to you when I was yet with you: for it is necessary that all things be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” Then he opened to them the understanding of the scriptures, that they might understand the scriptures; and he said to them: “Because thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all nations.” ³⁷

With these testimonies, therefore, just as Christ showed that the old testament is necessary for the firmness and certitude of our faith, so he demonstrated it to be most useful for the institution of the moral life — since from it he received so many examples for the shaping of an honest life: such as they are, when he rouses the sloth of his hearers to vigilance by the example of those who in the days of Noe were drowned by the unforeseen inundation of the deluge; ³⁸ or when he admonishes those relapsing into sins by the example of the wife of Loth, saying: “Remember Loth’s wife”; ³⁹ or when he deters the obstinate minds of the Jews by the recollection of the Sodomites and the Ninivites and the queen of the South; ⁴⁰ or when he reproaches the Pharisees that they do not the works of Abraham, whose sons they boast themselves; ⁴¹ or when, out of the words of Abraham, he calls back to penance the imitators of that rich man buried in hell, saying: “They have Moy-

(printed p. 622)

“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” Paul likewise, drawing the whole old testament to the instruction of morals, says that all the things which are written in it “happened in figure for our sake, that we should not be desirers of evil things, nor idolaters, nor fornicators, nor gluttons, nor murmurers, nor tempters of God — lest we perish as they did, who in the old testament perished for such misdeeds, whose scourgings (flagella) are written,” says the Apostle, “for our correction, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” ⁴² Which things, and innumerable others which could be produced for this sentence, I pass over: they most efficaciously convince [us] that the old scriptures are greatly necessary both for faith and for morals.

Proposition the fifth. The fifth proposition is: THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT FIGHTS, POINT BY POINT, AGAINST THE NEW TESTAMENT. And this above all Adimantus the Manichaean strove to establish, having published a book in which, to the several sentences of the old instrument, he opposed the several contrary sentences of the new testament. But that in the divine scriptures nothing can be contrary or repugnant is manifestly convinced from the things said above. For since the old scriptures were written by God inspiring [them] — Peter saying, “Not by human will was prophecy brought at any time, but the holy [men] of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit” — ⁴³ and God is the highest truth, from which proceeds the spirit of union and not of dissension, it is necessary that in the scriptures composed by his afflatus nothing adverse or dissonant be found. For as from the highest truth nothing but the true can possibly proceed, so it is impossible that the true, which proceeds from it, should fight with itself. Moreover, as Augustine rightly infers, if the divine scriptures had been fighting among themselves and discordant, how could it ever have come to pass that so many and so great peoples should have believed scriptures so dissonant among themselves and conflicting — not the unlearned only, and those accustomed to the fields, but [men] worn [in study] in the cities, in the schools, and in the gymnasia amid contentious disputations? ⁴⁴ who, whereas the garrulous [philosophers] ever dissented about the dogmas of philosophy — disciples from [their] masters, and fellow-disciples among themselves — at last, unanimous, came together under the concord of these scriptures: which is read never, either before or after, to have befallen any writings of the philosophers. For Plato dissents from Pythagoras in most things, Aristotle opposes Plato, and even his own disciples contradict Aristotle. But our writers are always concordant among themselves, nor do the apostles preach anything else than what the prophets pronounce. Who, although they be not so many as the writers of the gentiles — lest, like those, they should grow cheap by multitude — yet are not so few that their consensus is not to be wondered at. Yet we confess that many things are found in the sacred letters of which, although the meaning is the same, the words nevertheless apparently disagree: divine wisdom so disposing, unto the exercise of our faith, that while we know not how to reduce them to concord, we may pray to him who made both one, that he may open to us the reconciliation of the apparent contradiction. ⁴⁵ And let these things, said against the five propositions of the heretics, suffice.

OBJECTIONS OF THE HERETICS (Obiectiones Haereticorum)

1. No cause presents itself to us why we should receive the Old Testament. For if we consider the person of the testator — which is first sought in every testament — deservedly, on account of it, do we execrate the old testament. For the founder of this testament is that evil God of the Hebrews, the perpetual enemy of the good God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ; from whom [come] all evils, slaughters, thefts, and concupiscences; who kills, blinds, hardens, and injects evil concupiscences into the minds of men and of women; who gives evil laws — as he himself testifies through his own prophets — and precepts not good, in which the cultivators of the law cannot live. ⁴⁶

2. Then also the inheritance left in that testament is so wretched, and corporeal, and far from the goods of the soul, that after that blessed promise of the new testament — which promises us the kingdom of the heavens and perpetual life — even if his own testator should thrust it upon me gratis, I would of my own accord loathe [it]. For since so many immortal goods have been left me in the new testament, the carnal goods which the old promises to its own — namely riches, and fullness of the belly, sons and grandsons, and long life — I willingly and gladly permit to the Jews as their own, content, forsooth, with the splendid inheritance of the new testament alone, and of the kingdom of the heavens. ⁴⁷

3. Moreover, the testament is to be accepted [only] by those to whom, together with the testament, an inheritance is consigned. But since the old testament not only does not constitute us heirs, but rather even disinherits [us], what impropriety it is to usurp for ourselves the tablets of the old testament, which — the inheritance being transmitted to others — testify us to be disinherited! For who is ignorant that the old Testament promises the land of the Canaanites, and that to the Jews alone — that is, to the circumcised, and to those sacrificing, and abstaining from swine’s [flesh] and the rest of the meats which Moses calls unclean, observing the sabbaths, and the solemnity of the unleavened bread, and the rest of this kind, which the testator himself commanded them to observe? which, because they have pleased none of the Christians (for neither does any one of us keep them), it is fitting that, the inheritance being refused, we should give back the tablets also.

4. In vain, also, is a testament accepted by those who will not keep the will of the testator and the conditions of the testament. But since the conditions of the testament are that the heirs of the testament be circumcised, sacrifice, and abstain from unlawful foods, etc., and we keep not those things — I fear lest a Jew, rightly upbraiding me, should say: Why, wicked one, dost thou usurp for thyself the old testament, whose precepts thou keepest not? and what hast thou to do with the old testament, whose commands thou despisest? ⁴⁸

5. Furthermore, if there be any cause on account of which the old testament is to be received, this surely will be it: on account of the testimonies which are had of Christ in the law and the prophets. But since none such are found in them, by right their scriptures are seen to be worthy of contempt. And that there are in them no prophecies of Christ appears from those very testimonies which are wont to be brought forward, out of the old testament, for the confirmation of the faith concerning Christ. Out of which ⁴⁹

(printed p. 623)

together with that most common testimony brought out of Deuteronomy — “A PROPHET, namely, like unto thee will I raise up for them,” etc. — [this] in no way looks to Christ. What, I ask, is to be thought of the other testimonies which are subjoined to this testimony by a like example? which certainly cannot be understood of Christ: for Christ is not a prophet, nor like to Moses — since that one [Moses] was a man, this one [Christ] God; that one a sinner, this one holy; that one born of coition, this one (according to you) born of a virgin; that one, his God being offended, is slain upon the mountain, this one, well-pleasing to his father, suffers by his own will. How therefore will he be a prophet like to Moses? But if there is no testimony of Christ in the old testament, then it is useless for the confirmation of our faith. ⁵⁰

6. But if it confers nothing to the certitude of our faith, much less will it help toward morals. For how can those most wicked examples — worthy of all hatred and loathing — which the old testament everywhere sets before us in the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, profit us for the instruction of living well? namely, that fathers-in-law sleep with their daughters-in-law, like Judas; fathers with [their] daughters, like Loth; prophets with harlots, like Osee; the Nazarites of God with whores, like Samson; husbands to behold the nights of their own wives [given over] to lovers, like Abraham; a married man to be mingled with two german sisters [full sisters], like Jacob; rulers of the peoples, and those most inspired (entheos) voices, like David and Salomon, to wallow with harlots by thousands and by hundreds: and many other examples of like foulness, which it would be long to enumerate. ⁵¹

7. The old testament also narrates many fabulous and fabricated things, which shall be told by us in their own place; on account of which Paul, not unjustly, calls the old scriptures profane, and old-wives’ fables, and foolish genealogies. For concerning these he said to Timothy: “Avoid PROFANE (Prophanas) and old-wives’ fables.” And again: “Attend NOT (Ne intendas) to Jewish fables, and interminable genealogies, which furnish questions rather than the edification which is in faith; as certain [men], wishing to be doctors of the law.” And again: “Avoid FOOLISH (Stultas) and undisciplined questions, knowing that they beget strifes.” And, writing the same things to Titus, he says: “Avoid QUESTIONS (Quaestiones) and genealogies and contentions: for they are useless and vain.” All which things are said by Paul concerning the utterances of the law and the prophets. ⁵²

8. To these is added, that the old testament is so hostile and repugnant to the new testament that the two cannot come together into one. And indeed, first, in Genesis it is written that God by himself made heaven and earth; but in John it is written that the world was made through our Lord Jesus Christ, where it is said: “And the world was made through him.” In Genesis it is read: “The Lord rested (Quievit) on the seventh day from every work which he had wrought”; but in the gospel, on the contrary, Christ says: “My Father (Pater meus) worketh until now.” In Genesis it is written: “Let us make (Faciamus) man to our image and likeness”; but Christ says to the Jews: “You (Vos) are of your father the devil” — yet they cannot be sons of the devil [and] made to the image and likeness of God. The old testament forbids separation from a wife, saying: “Therefore (Ideo) shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh”; the contrary of which Christ persuades, saying: “There is no one (Nemo est) who leaveth wife and children for the kingdom of the heavens, who shall not receive much more in this time, and in the world to come life eternal.” In Exodus it is said: “Honor (Honora) thy father and thy mother”; but Christ, to him who wished to perform the office of burial for his father, commands the contrary, saying: “Let the dead (Sine mortuos) bury their own dead.” In the old testament it is said that God was seen by Jacob, by Moses, and by many others, face to face; but on the contrary in the gospel it is said: “God no man hath seen (Deum nemo vidit) at any time.” The old testament describes God as hating the evil and avenging sins, when it says: “I God (Ego Deus), a Zealot, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the sons unto the third and fourth generation, upon those who hate me”; but Christ asserts him to be benign upon the evil, when he says: “Who (Qui) is benign upon the good and the evil.” And he himself commands that we forgive a sinning brother, not only seven times, but seventy times seven. The old testament commands vengeance, saying: “An eye for an eye (Oculum pro oculo), a tooth for a tooth”; but Christ, in the gospel, destroying this precept, says: “You have heard (Audistis) that it was said to the ancients, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; but I say to you, resist not evil; and if any one strike thee on one cheek, offer him also the other.” Out of which, and other things like to these, in which the old scriptures fight with the new, it becomes manifest that not unjustly is the old testament disdained by us as contrary to the new testament. ⁵³

9. They exhort us moreover to the reprobation of the old testament, no less the Evangelical and Apostolic exhortations than [their] examples — but especially the example of the Apostles; who, lest they should be pressed any longer by the intolerable servitude of the old testament, although they were Jews and born under the old testament, nevertheless shook off its yoke. But we, on the contrary, having obtained by the benefit of nature that we should not be born under the law of servitude — Christ forthwith meeting us with the full gift of liberty — how wretched and foolish shall we be, and moreover ungrateful, if of our own accord we addict ourselves to servitude? Indeed Paul thereupon rebukes the Galatians, that, relapsing into circumcision, they went back to the weak and needy elements, which they wished to serve anew. How therefore shall we admit in ourselves that for which we see others reprehended? It is base, certainly, to go into servitude; but baser to return. ⁵⁴

10. Frequent, finally, are the admonitions of Christ and of his Apostles that admonish us of the same. “No one,” says Christ, “seweth a new patch to an old garment, otherwise a greater rent is made; neither doth he entrust new wine to old, musty (veternosis) wineskins” — intimating that Christian newness is not to be mixed with Hebrew oldness. For since it is sordid, when one is clad in new garments, not to give the old garments to inferiors, therefore he admonished us to leave the old vestment — that is, the old testament — to the Jews as to the lowest servants, and likewise the law; and he compared the prophets to dried-up and inveterate trees, saying: “The Law and the Prophets [were] until John” — namely, that, according to Paul, he might show us that everything which grows old and ages is nigh to destruction ⁵⁵

(printed p. 624)

to be [nigh to destruction]. And Paul, for this cause, called the old testament the “ministration of death,” when he said: “The MINISTRATION (Ministratio) of death, or the testament of death, formed in letters upon stones” — so that we should shun that [testament] no otherwise than [as a thing] put forth by the author of death; knowing that that law (as the same [Paul] says in another place) is not set for the just, but for parricides, matricides, and perjurers — but not for those who live justly in Christ. ⁵⁶

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OBJECTIONS (Dissolutio Obiectorum)

1. If the rash heretics had commemorated, particularly and expressly, in those things which with unbridled tongue they utter against the good God, when, how, and in what place these things were done by God himself, we should indeed refute [them] likewise particularly and member by member, responding to the several [points]. But now, since they themselves touch upon certain things universally, as it were fleeing [glancingly], we too respond generally and universally. We say that the evil concupiscences are not from the God of the old testament. For how should he inject concupiscence who says: “Thou shalt NOT covet (Non concupisces) the things which are thy neighbor’s, nor his wife, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor whatsoever are thy neighbor’s”? If therefore he takes away concupiscence, he is not a supplier of concupiscence. But if he hardens and blinds the minds of some, he is not therefore to be called evil; otherwise Christ also would be evil, who says: “For judgment (In iudicium) I came into this world, that they who see not may see, and they who see may become blind.” He therefore, who — according to the apostolic sentence — has mercy on whom he will, and hardens whom he will, without doubt illuminates whom he will, and blinds whom he will. But there is no iniquity with God, to whom the Church says: “Mercy (Misericordiam) and judgment I will sing to thee, O Lord.” He illuminates, therefore, by mercy; he blinds by judgment — most equitable, though most hidden; for inscrutable are his judgments; to whom nevertheless it is said: “Thou hast sat (Sedisti) upon the throne, who judgest justice.” But when those wretched [men] say, “How is the God of the Hebrews good, who commands thefts?” — the vain men know not that with God nothing perishes, and that his judgment is just, and that God “is not led by the nose” (naso non suspenditur), as the Egyptians thought, who wished the Jews to have labored without wages — and that indeed not for a few years, but for two hundred and fifteen years. It was equitable, therefore, before God and men, that a reward should at the last be rendered to them. And for this cause the just God commanded his own [people] to plunder the Egyptians, and to go out thence with the spoils; and for the same cause [he ordained] most just slaughters, and havoc as great among his own as among strangers, so that no crime of any sinner of his own should remain unavenged. But, they say, “How is the God of the law good, who glories that he gave to his own precepts not good?” — and the most unskilled scoundrels (nebulones) do not perceive those vital and holy precepts of the old law, of which Paul said: “The LAW indeed [is] holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” — [and that they are] for this reason called “not good,” not because in themselves they are evil, but because, a comparison being made of them with evangelical perfection, they are less good, and in a certain manner evil: by the usual mode of speech of divine scripture, namely, which frequently is wont to call those things which are less good, not only “not good,” but even “evil”; just as Christ [called] so many good men, who were in the world, — by intuition of the divine goodness — [and] denies them to be good, saying: “No one (Nemo) is good, but God alone”; and just as the apostles, who by the merit of election excelled the goodness of the human race in many ways, [yet] compared to the goodness of God are called evil — the Lord saying to them: “If you (Si vos), being evil, know how to give good things to your sons, how much more shall your father from heaven give the good spirit to those asking him?” The Apostle also thus affirms that the glory of the law was blunted by the light of the new testament, so that — by comparison with the evangelical splendor — he pronounces it not to have been glorified, saying: “For neither (Nam nec) is that glorious which was glorified, by reason of the excelling glory.” Good, therefore, and holy, and just is the God, the testator of the old testament. ⁵⁷

2. Whose testament, indeed, we do not receive for this reason — that our hope should be fixed in the promise of temporal things — since we do not even believe those saints of that time, and spiritual men, the patriarchs and prophets, to have been given over to these earthly things. For we have heard a prophet casting away such felicity, and singing that one must flee for refuge to the one Lord: “Deliver (Erue) me from the hand of the sons of strangers, whose sons are as new plantings established in their youth; their daughters set round about, and adorned as the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, bursting out from this into that; their sheep fruitful, their oxen fat; there is no ruin of the wall, nor passage, nor cry in their streets. They have called the people blessed to whom these things are.” Which felicity David, deriding, forthwith on the contrary added: “Blessed (Beatus) is the people whose Lord is its God.” But just as those old fathers understood, in these promises — the Spirit revealing [it] — the future things which were being foretold through those very [temporal goods], and on this account were kindled to the desire of the new testament: so we also, knowing that the things which were signified through them have been completed in us, for this cause venerate and receive the memory of the old testament as [it were] the promise of our present felicity. ⁵⁸

3. Not, therefore, do we hold his scriptures for obtaining that earthly inheritance, but we receive [them] for understanding in them the promises of the new testament; for the testification of the old reconciles faith to the new. For we know that the promises of temporal things are contained in the old testament, and that for this reason it is called the “old testament”; and [we know] that the promise of eternal life, and the kingdom of the heavens, pertains to the new testament — but that in those temporal [things] there were figures of things to come. In which manner, indeed, Paul taught that the old testament is to be received by us, when he says: “All (Omnia) things happened to them in figure; and they were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” ⁵⁹

4. Neither is there danger that a Jew should rightly upbraid me. For to him saying, “Why holdest thou the old testament, whose precepts thou keepest not?” I will answer, that in those books there are two kinds of precepts: precepts, namely, for signifying life [the life to come], and precepts for acting out life [the moral life to be lived]; of which the latter are now observed by Christians, but the former were then rightly observed by the Jews, when they foretold those things which now have been revealed. But now, after the Light — Christ — has come, [it is] superfluous [that they should be observed] by us ⁶⁰

(printed p. 625)

[it would be superfluous] that those shadows should be observed by us. Nevertheless we hold them — not for religion, but for testification; just as we also hold the carnal promises which are contained in them, since through them the spiritual things to be hoped-for by us have been revealed.

5. But they say: what need is there of the old testament for the certitude of our faith, in which there is no testimony of Christ? For what is written in Deuteronomy pertains not to Christ, because Christ is not like to Moses. To these [objections] we thus meet [them]: that which is called “like” is not understood [to be] like in every part and manner. For not only those things which are of one and the same nature are said to be like among themselves — as olive to olive — but also those which are of disparate nature, as olive to wild-olive (oleaster), and spelt (far) to wheat. So also the Son of God, who is so far distant from mortal things, is called in the scriptures “Lamb” and “Lion”; as in John it is read, “Behold (Ecce) the lamb of God,” and in Paul, “The rock (Petra) was Christ” — which [names] they by no means would have spoken, unless Christ took upon himself some likeness with those [things]. Since therefore Christ was made like to a sheep, what wonder if he disdained not to be made like to Moses, who was unlike to Moses? Like, indeed, because man; unlike, because God: like, because made in the likeness of the flesh of sin; unlike, because holy and without sin: like, because born of a woman; unlike, because born of the Holy Spirit: like, because by true death he died upon the mountain; unlike, because he died not on account of his own sins, but by his own power: like, because — his God being offended on account of the crimes of men — he bore the offenses of the human race, dying in his own body; unlike, because it was not — [his] God being offended — on account of his own fault that he died. ⁶¹

6. To those things which the most impure heretics vituperate in the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, we respond, that although — out of those vices which are narrated concerning the fathers in the old testament — it be conceded that certain [of them] were grave crimes, not on that account is the authority of scripture diminished; nay rather, it is the more commended to us, that it not rashly, but for most just causes, wisely narrates such vices — namely, that by the consideration of them we may obtain these four [things]: to wit, the instruction of faith, fear, and hope. First, faith: that we should doubt nothing of the truth of that history, seeing that it — as the brightness of a faithful mirror [reflecting] the persons brought before it — indicates not only those which are fair and whole, but also those which are deformed and vicious; and it excepts no person to be flattered, but the deeds of men, as much to be praised as to be blamed, it either itself judges, or proposes to be judged by the readers; nor only intimating the men themselves as either laudable or blameworthy, but also not keeping silent certain things praiseworthy in the blameworthy, and certain things blameworthy in the praiseworthy. Secondly, it refers the vices of the fathers to our instruction — not indeed that we should imitate and follow them, but that we may know those things to be shunned and fled which the scripture blames. Thirdly, to fear: that the fall of the greater should be the fear of the lesser. For if those so holy men the pernicious blandishments of this world overcame, how much more is it to be feared by us, [who are] weaker? Fourthly, to the consolation of hope: that we may learn, in such lapses, that salvation is not to be despaired of; for certain [persons], having fallen into sins, sin the more by desperation, and not only neglect the medicine of repenting, but, for the fulfilling of dishonest and nefarious desires, become slaves of lusts and of wicked cupidities, as if they would lose [their labor] if they did not do what lust tracks out — whereas already a certain damnation awaits them. Against this exceedingly perilous and destructive manner [of sinning], the commemoration of the sins into which the just and holy [men] fell is of avail. ⁶²

7. But as to what pertains to the fables which the impious confirm from the testimony of Paul — who, [understanding it] thus, unless a much-blinded heretic, would err? Why did the Apostle himself not do this, if he judged these to be old-wives’ fables? Why, writing to the same Timothy, does he say: “We know (Scimus) that the law is good, if any one use it lawfully”? And why does he command the same [Timothy] to remain in the sacred letters which he had learned from infancy, [they] instructing unto salvation through faith? But let those insane [men] know that the Jews have, besides scripture, certain traditions called δευτέρωσιν (deuterosin) [the “repetition,” the Mishnah], in which they hand down that God at first created two women for the [first] man, out of whom they weave various genealogies, contending that some descended from the one, others from the other woman. Concerning which traditions, when once the Pharisees interrogated Christ, saying, “Why (Quare) do thy disciples not walk according to the traditions of the elders?” they were refuted by him, saying: “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for your traditions?” Which words the divine Epiphanius, expounding, said that those traditions are four kinds of expositions which are among the Jews: of which one is borne under the name of Moses; the second is [that of] Rabbi Aciba; the third [that of] Adda, or Juda; the fourth [that] of the sons of Asamonaeus [the Hasmoneans]. Concerning which — and also concerning the genealogies of the Jews and the Talmudic questions condemned by Paul — Annius, most skilled in antiquities, wrote some things worthy to be known, in the commentaries on the Chronography of Philo; to whom, for brevity’s sake, we send the reader eager for this knowledge, passing on to those places which the Manichaeans adduce out of both testaments as [things] fighting among themselves. ⁶³

8. Whose contradiction — because it is placed in words alone — is dissolved with easy effort. The first opposition, therefore, which looks to the exordium of Genesis, is removed in three ways. First, when it is said, “In the beginning (In principio) God created heaven and earth,” by “God” is signified the Trinity, in which not only the Father, but also the Son and the Holy Spirit, are understood. Secondly, when in the same place it is written, “God said, Let there be light; and light was made,” it is necessary that we understand God to have made, through the Word, that which he made; but the Word of the Father is the Son. Thirdly, if for this reason the Son is not there understood — because it is not said that God made the world through the Son — neither in the gospel does God through the Son feed the birds and clothe the lilies, and the other innumerable things which Christ says the Father does, although he does not say that he does them through the Son. The second contradiction is removed, because it is not written that God rested from all his works so that thereafter he should work nothing whatsoever, but that he rested from all the works which he had then made — that is, from instituting the natures of things — so that he should no longer make the world [anew]; from which work, after [its] perfection, he had ceased: but in administering [governing] the world [he works] many [things] ⁶⁴

(printed p. 626)

[in administering the world he works] many things, always. And in this work Christ intimated him to be, when he said: “My Father (Pater meus) worketh until now.” ⁶⁵

The third contradiction also is thus loosed. In three ways, in the scriptures, the name of “sons” is taken: according to nature, as Isaac [is] son of Abraham; according to doctrine, as the Apostle calls “his sons” those who learned the gospel from him; thirdly, according to imitation, as the Apostle calls us “sons of Abraham,” because we imitate his faith. The Jews, therefore, by discipline and by imitation are sons of the devil, but by nature sons of God. ⁶⁶

The fourth is thus removed. When the cause of obtaining the kingdom of the heavens is not present, if any one leave [his] wife, it is disapproved by the Lord; but when the wife impedes the man from the possession of the kingdom of the heavens, then the wife is commanded to be left: because the wife is joined to the man, that together they may merit the kingdom of the heavens. ⁶⁷

The fifth is settled in the same manner: that on account of the kingdom of the heavens we should honor [our] parents, and the same [parents] — when it shall be needful, on account of the announcing of the kingdom of God — we should contemn. For the love of parents is a certain step to the love of God; whereby it is manifest that the honor of parents in its own degree is to be kept, and yet that they, in comparison with the divine love — especially if they are an impediment — are with no doubt to be contemned. ⁶⁸

The sixth is thus loosed. When it is said, “God (Deum) no one hath seen at any time,” it is understood of God according to the immutable essence of his divinity, which cannot be seen except by a most purified and most simple heart; but when we read that he was seen, and heard, and spoke to many, we understand this to have been done by him through some visible creature: as in certain places scripture testifies that an angel was seen, where it says that God was seen — as in that wrestling of Jacob, scripture calls him an angel whom Jacob calls God, saying, “I saw (Vidi) the Lord face to face.” And that God, whom Moses said had appeared to himself in the bush, and on Sinai with the law, Stephen — in the Acts of the Apostles — testifies to have been this same angel. ⁶⁹

The seventh is settled in this manner. God is a Zealot and benign: benign indeed, as Paul says, when by his benignity and patience he invites the evil to penance; a Zealot, and punishing unto the third and fourth generation, when by his justice he punishes those who — correction being despised — wished to persevere in the same perversity of [their] parents; but indulgent and pardoning he is, not only seven times, but seventy times seven, toward those who — the correction of God being accepted — are reconciled through penance. ⁷⁰

The eighth is thus reduced to concord. In these two sentences [the “eye for an eye” and “turn the other cheek”] not a contrariety of the testaments is shown, but a diversity of them in perfection. For since there are two degrees of leniency — the first, that the measure of the received injury should in no way exceed the sorrow of the avenger; the second, that one should forgive the whole injury with placated mind — the old testament, as [being] less perfect, constituted carnal men at the first degree, of measuring vengeance; but the new testament, as [being] more perfect, led spiritual men even to the second degree, of complete remission. ⁷¹

9. But concerning the example of the apostles renouncing the legal precepts, we say that they did not fall away from those precepts for signifying the life [to come] according to faith — as though they did not believe them to have been figures of things to come — but that they desisted only from the observation of those [precepts] whose shadows had fled away, the evangelical light already coruscating. Neither do we, believing those things, relapse again into servitude: because we do not observe the things which once were commanded to the fathers for the foretelling of us, but in liberty we read the things which were written for the confirming of us. But Paul rebukes the Galatians, not as [men] reading the scripture of circumcision religiously, but as [men] wishing to be circumcised superstitiously. ⁷²

10. Neither do those testimonies of Christ and of Paul have any weight. For the new patch, and the old garment, and the new wine, and the old wineskins, do not signify two testaments, but two lives and two hopes. For if any one should think that two hopes are to be had — that he should serve God both on account of earthly felicity and on account of the kingdom of the heavens — this [hope] does not contain that [other]; for when this [earthly hope] shall have been disturbed by some tribulation, the failing man will lose that [heavenly] one also. Thence is that [saying]: “No one (Nemo) can serve two masters,” which Christ expounded, saying: “You cannot (Non potestis) serve God and mammon.” He mixes, therefore, the new patch with the old garment — not [he] who mixes the old testament with the new, but [he] who wishes to have spiritual continence, and has not yet laid aside the carnal hope. But as to what they add — that “the Law (Lex) and the prophets endured until John” — it is not so to be understood, that after John both are altogether to be cast away; but that the law and the prophets were until John as preparers and fore-announcers of the advent of Christ, which [advent] coming, their preparation and fore-announcing ceases. Yet both remain for the confirmation of the fore-announced things, that we may know the advent of Christ to have been foretold by them, by divine disposition, long before it came to pass. They remain also for the conserving of the gratitude of our mind, that we may render thanks to those who foretold to us so happy an advent of Christ. For just as, if any one should have a pedagogue (as also the Apostle says that the law was a pedagogue to us unto the advent of Christ), when he shall have come to [full] age and shall have received a teacher, he does not altogether reject the pedagogue as an enemy: so we also, since we were led [as children] in the law and the prophets until the advent of the teacher Christ, the teacher being found, do not reprobate the pedagogue, but confess gratitude to him, that he led our childhood [along], and dismissed [us] to more perfect disciplines. There remains, therefore, the law — which Paul for this reason says is not set for the just: because it is not against the just, inasmuch as the just [man] has already anticipated to fulfill the things which are of the law; but it is set for the unjust, that is, against the unjust, unto condemnation; and on this account [it is] called “the testament of death” — not because it was given by the author of death, but because it commands death to be given to homicides, adulterers, and the transgressors of its precepts. For thus it was fitting that the testament of death should go before, so that, first being dead to sins, we might live to justice. ⁷³

(printed p. 627)