Comparing Moses with Christ, Faustus the Manichaean, in Augustine (bk. 16 against him), thus wrote: “Moses is slain on the mountain, his God being offended; this one [Christ], greatly pleasing the Father, suffers by his own will” — as if, because he was affected with death for a sin, therefore he also in death displeased God, and so is not in the number of the saved. And perhaps someone a little more addicted to Logical amplifications would say it suffices that Moses had once, of old, been God’s servant — even if, then, when he died, he were not [one], and had lost God’s friendship. But if we consider [it] with Logic’s reasoning, as we ought, and [with] the moral manner of speaking, it will easily appear that even when Moses met death, he was in God’s grace. For when some good Lord says to some good man — whom he wishes to succeed to one of his dead servants — “Such-and-such, my servant, is dead; take now his place,” he seems to do two [things] at once: first, indeed, to adorn that dead [servant] with a good eulogy — [namely], that he was an innocent servant, faithful, and pleasing to himself to the very last; then, to exhort this other [man] who is substituted, that he imitate that one, [and] bear himself in the same manner, and so enjoy an equal grace and charity of his Lord. Hence the otherwise noble Dialectician Cajetan: “This — ‘my servant’ — is an epithet of Moses, by which God Himself testifies that Moses’s services pleased Him, by calling him His servant. Nay, by saying ‘Moses my servant is dead,’ He discloses that His servant is dead: that is, [that] although he had sometimes sinned, and by sinning had not been ‘my servant,’ yet [now] my servant is dead — he died in the state of my servitude; he died thus, [so] that whatever he was, whatever he did, was mine. For a servant — [in] all that he is — is his Lord’s.” But to that Manichaean, St. Augustine responds (bk. cited, ch. 16): “You would not therefore derogate from Moses, the servant of GOD, because you said he was a sinner, and was slain on the mountain, his God being offended. For he too knew how to glory in the Lord, that he might be saved by Him — by whom [is] also that one who says, ‘Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.’ For Moses is reproved by the divine voice, because his faith wavered a little at eliciting water from the rock — which he can have in common with the sin of Peter, who, amid the waves, doubted by a similar defect of faith. But far be it that we believe him thence estranged from the eternal society of the Saints — [he] who, with St. Elijah (as the Gospel says), merited to attend the Lord glorified on the mountain. For also in the old books of the law, even after that very sin, how great his merit is before God, appears.” And again (quest. 1 on this book): “Not only by this testimony,” he says, “but also in Deuteronomy, by many documents, Moses is approved [as having] so died, as God’s servant, and pleasing to God — although in him that vengeance was completed, that he should not enter the land of promise. From which it is given to understand [that] the Lord, even being angry at His good servants in something, both temporally punishes [them], and ye[t]—
(col. 266)
—yet has [them] in the number of those who are in His house, [seen as] useful in honor to the Lord, to whom He is about to give the promised [rewards] of the saints.” About this very [thing] he disputes more fully [in] quest. 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13 — and indeed so that he shows [Moses] did not even come to purgatory (quest. 7). But the matter is more certain than that one should dwell longer [on it] — especially since it was explained in general toward the end of the Pentateuch.