BOOK ONE. Among all the divine authorities that are contained in the Holy Scriptures, the Gospel deservedly excels. For what the Law and the Prophets foretold as to come, this is shown in the Gospel as rendered and fulfilled.
Of this Gospel the first preachers were the apostles, who saw the Lord Himself and our Savior Christ even present in the flesh; and they took care to announce to the human race—the office of evangelizing having been imposed upon them—not only those things which they remembered as heard from His mouth or done by Him before their own eyes, as spoken and done, but also those things which, before they had cleaved to Him through discipleship, had been divinely accomplished in His nativity or infancy or boyhood, and which, being worthy of memory, they were able to inquire into and learn, whether from Him Himself or from His parents or from any others whatever by most certain evidence and most faithful testimonies.
Of these, certain ones—that is, Matthew and John—even published in separate books writings about Him, such as seemed fit to be written. And lest it should be thought that, as regards perceiving and preaching the Gospel, it made any difference whether those announce it who followed the same Lord here appearing in the flesh with the service of discipleship, or those who faithfully believed what had been ascertained from them, it was provided by divine providence, through the Holy Spirit, that to certain ones also of those who followed the first apostles, authority should be granted not only of announcing but even of writing the Gospel. These are Mark and Luke.
But other men, who attempted or dared to write anything about the deeds of the Lord or of the apostles, were not such in their own times that the Church should place faith in them and receive their writings into the canonical authority of the holy books—not only because they were not such men as ought to be believed when they narrate, but also because they inserted into their writings certain things falsely, which the catholic and apostolic rule of faith and sound doctrine condemns.
These four evangelists, therefore, most widely known throughout the whole world—and perhaps four for this reason, because there are four parts of the earth, through whose entirety, by the very sacrament of their number, they in a manner declared that Christ's Church was to be spread abroad—are reported to have written in this order: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John. Whence there was one order for them of knowing and preaching, but another of writing. For as to knowing and preaching, those assuredly were first who followed the Lord present in the flesh, heard Him speaking and saw Him acting, and were sent from His mouth to evangelize.
But in composing the Gospel—which must be believed to have been divinely ordained—out of the number of those whom the Lord chose before His passion, two held the first and the last place: first Matthew, last John; so that the remaining two, who were not of that number, yet had followed Christ speaking in them, being as it were sons to be embraced, and thereby placed in the middle position, might be fortified on either side by them. Of these four indeed only Matthew is reported to have written in the Hebrew tongue, the others in Greek.
And although each is seen to have held a certain order of his own in narrating, yet not one of them is found to have wished to write as though ignorant of another preceding him, or to have passed over as unknown things which another is found to have written; but, as it was inspired to each one, he added the not-superfluous cooperation of his own labor. For Matthew is understood to have undertaken the incarnation of the Lord according to the royal line, and most things done and said by Him according to the present life of men. Mark, following him, seems as it were his attendant and abbreviator.
For with John alone he said nothing; alone by himself very few things; with Luke alone fewer; but with Matthew a great many, and many things in almost the very same and identical words, whether in agreement with him alone or with the rest. Luke, however, appears more occupied about the priestly line and person of the Lord. For even in ascending to David himself, he did not follow the royal stem, but through those who were not kings comes out to Nathan the son of David, who was himself not a king either—unlike Matthew, who, descending through Solomon the king, followed in order the other kings also, preserving among them a mystical number, of which we shall speak later.
For the Lord Jesus Christ, the one true king and the one true priest—the former to rule us, the latter to expiate us—declared that He enacted His own figure in these two persons, singly commended among the fathers: whether by that title which was fixed above His cross, 'King of the Jews' (whence, by a hidden prompting, Pilate answered, 'What I have written, I have written'—for it had been foretold in the Psalms, 'Do not corrupt the inscription of the title'); or, as regards the person of the priest, in that He taught us to offer and to receive, whence He sent before a prophecy about Himself, saying, 'You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.' And by many other documents of the divine Scriptures Christ appears as king and priest.
Hence David himself—who is not without reason more frequently called father than the father of Abraham, and whom both Matthew and Luke held in common (the one as him from whom Christ descended through Solomon, the other as him to whom Christ ascends through Nathan)—although he was openly a king, yet also prefigured the person of the priest when he ate the loaves of the presentation, which it was not lawful to eat except for priests alone. To this is added that Luke alone also mentions Mary having been shown by the angel to be the kinswoman of Elizabeth, who was the wife of Zechariah the priest; concerning whom the same Luke wrote that he had her as wife from the daughters of Aaron, that is, from the tribe of the priests.
Since, therefore, Matthew directed his intention toward the person of the king, and Luke toward that of the priest, they both especially commended the humanity of Christ. For it is according to man that Christ was made both king and priest, to whom God gave the throne of David His father, that of His kingdom there should be no end, and that He should be, to intercede for us, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. But Luke did not have an abbreviator joined to him, as Matthew had Mark; and this perhaps not without some sacrament, because it belongs to kings not to be without the attendance of companions.
Whence he who had undertaken to narrate the royal person of Christ had joined to himself as it were a companion, who in a manner followed his footsteps; but the priest, since he alone entered into the holy of holies, therefore Luke, whose intention was about the priesthood of Christ, did not have as it were a following associate who in a manner abbreviated his narration. These three evangelists, nevertheless, were chiefly engaged in those matters which Christ enacted temporally through human flesh; but John, on the other hand, especially aimed at the very divinity of the Lord, by which He is equal to the Father, and took care above all to commend it in his Gospel, as much as he believed sufficient among men.
Thus he is borne far above those three, so that you may see these in a manner conversing on earth with Christ the man, but him as having transcended the cloud by which all the earth is covered, and having reached the clear heaven, whence, with the most acute and most steadfast keenness of mind, he might behold in the beginning the Word, God with God, through whom all things were made, and might recognize Him made flesh, that He might dwell among us—that He received flesh, not that He was changed into flesh. For unless the assumption of flesh had taken place with the divinity preserved unchangeable, it would not be said, 'I and the Father are one,' for the Father and the flesh are not one. And this testimony of the Lord about Himself the same John alone recorded, and: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father also,' and:
'I in the Father and the Father in me,' and: 'That they may be one, as we also are one,' and: 'Whatever the Father does, these same things the Son also does likewise,' and if there are any other things which intimate to those who rightly understand the divinity of Christ, in which He is equal to the Father—John almost alone set these down in his Gospel, as though he had drunk more abundantly, and in a manner more intimately, the secret of His divinity from the very breast of the Lord, upon which he was accustomed to recline at His banquet. Accordingly, since two virtues are set before the human soul, one active, the other contemplative—the one by which one journeys, the other to which one arrives; the one by which one labors, that the heart may be cleansed to see God, the other by which one is at leisure and God is seen:
the former is in the precepts for exercising this temporal life, the latter in the doctrine of that everlasting life. And through this the former works, the latter rests, because the former is in the purgation of sins, the latter in the light of the purged. And through this, in this mortal life the former is in the work of good conduct, but the latter rather in faith, and among very few, through a mirror in an enigma and in part, in some vision of unchangeable truth. These two virtues are understood to be figured in the two wives of Jacob—concerning whom I discoursed against Faustus the Manichean, according to my small measure, as much as seemed to suffice for that work. For Leah is interpreted 'laboring,' but Rachel 'the vision of the beginning.'
From which it is given to be understood, if you attend diligently, that the three evangelists, having more copiously pursued the temporal deeds and sayings of the Lord which would especially avail for the forming of the morals of the present life, were engaged about that active virtue; but John, narrating far fewer deeds of the Lord, yet writing more diligently and more abundantly His sayings—those especially which would intimate the unity of the Trinity and the felicity of eternal life—held his intention and preaching in commending the contemplative virtue.
Whence those who from that Apocalypse interpreted the four living creatures as referring to the four evangelists seem to me to have attended to something more probable—those who understood the lion in Matthew, the man in Mark, the calf in Luke, the eagle in John—than those who assigned the man to Matthew, the eagle to Mark, the lion to John. For they wished to draw a certain conjecture from the beginnings of the books, not from the whole intention of the evangelists, which was rather to be searched out. For much more fittingly is he who especially commended the royal person of Christ signified by the lion. Whence in the Apocalypse also the lion is mentioned together with the royal tribe itself, where it is said: 'The lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered.'
For according to Matthew the Magi are also narrated to have come from the East to seek and adore the king, who was born and appeared to them through a star; and King Herod himself dreads the infant king, and, in order to be able to kill Him, slays so many little ones. But that Luke was signified by the calf, on account of the greatest victim of the priest, neither of them doubted. For there the discourse of the narrator begins from Zechariah the priest; there the kinship of Mary and Elizabeth is mentioned; there the mysteries of the first priesthood fulfilled in the infant Christ are narrated; and whatever other things can be diligently observed, by which it may appear that Luke had his intention about the person of the priest.
Mark, therefore, who wished to narrate neither the royal nor the priestly line, neither the kinship nor the consecration, and yet is shown to have been engaged in those things which Christ the man did, seems to be signified in those four living creatures only by the figure of the man. But these three animals—whether the lion or the man or the calf—walk upon the earth; whence these three evangelists were chiefly occupied in those things which Christ did in the flesh, and in the precepts of exercising the mortal life which He handed down to those who bear flesh. But John indeed, like an eagle, flies above the clouds of human weakness, and beholds the light of unchangeable truth with the most acute and most steadfast eyes of the heart.
These holy chariots of the Lord, by which, borne through the world, He subdues the peoples under His gentle yoke and light burden, certain men, whether out of impious vanity or out of unskilled rashness, assail with slanders, in order to detract from the faith of their truthful narration—through whom the Christian religion, disseminated throughout the world, has come forth with such great fruitfulness that unbelieving men now scarcely dare to mutter their slanders even among themselves, restrained by the faith of the nations and the devotion of all peoples.
Nevertheless, because they still, by their slanderous disputations, either hold some back from the faith, lest they believe, or, as far as they are able, agitate and disturb those already believing; and because some brethren, their faith being safe, desire to know what they may reply to such questions, whether for the advancement of their own knowledge or for refuting the empty talk of those others—with the Lord our God inspiring and helping (which would that it might profit also for their own salvation!)—we have undertaken in this work to demonstrate the error or rashness of those who think they can bring forth cunning enough accusations against the four books of the Gospel, which the four evangelists wrote each singly. And that this may be done, it must be shown how these four writers do not contradict one another.
For this they are accustomed, as it were the palm of their vanity, to object—that the evangelists themselves disagree among themselves. But first this must be discussed, which is wont to move some: why the Lord Himself wrote nothing, so that it is necessary to believe others writing about Him.
For this they say, even most especially those pagans who do not dare to blame or blaspheme the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and attribute to Him the most excellent wisdom—yet only as to a man—but say that His disciples attributed to their master more than He was, so that they called Him the Son of God and the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and that He and God the Father are one, and whatever similar things there are in the apostolic writings, by which we have learned that He, together with the Father, is to be worshiped as one God. For they think He is to be honored as a most wise man, but deny that He is to be worshiped as God.
When, therefore, they ask why He Himself wrote nothing, they seem to have been ready to believe about Him what He Himself had written about Himself, not what others had proclaimed about Him according to their own judgment. Of these I ask: why concerning certain of their most noble philosophers did they believe what those philosophers' disciples left written in memory, when they themselves had written nothing about themselves? For Pythagoras, than whom Greece then had nothing more illustrious in that contemplative virtue, is reported to have written nothing, not only about himself, but not even about any matter whatsoever.
Socrates, however, whom in turn they set above all others in the active philosophy by which morals are shaped — so much so that they do not keep silent about the fact that he was even pronounced by the testimony of their own god Apollo to be the wisest of all men — treated the fables of Aesop in a few verses, applying his own words and metres to another's matter. So far was he from wishing to write anything of his own that he said he did even this under compulsion by the command of his own daemon, as Plato, the most noble of his disciples, records. Yet in that very work he chose to adorn another's opinions rather than his own.
What reason, then, is there why concerning those men they should believe what their disciples entrusted to writing about them, yet refuse to believe about Christ what His disciples wrote concerning Him — especially since they confess that the rest of mankind were surpassed by Him in wisdom, although they refuse to confess Him to be God? Or could those men, whom they do not doubt were far inferior to Him, produce truthful disciples about themselves, while He could not? But if this is said most absurdly, then let them believe about Him whom they confess to be wise, not what they themselves wish, but what they read in the writings of those who learned the things they wrote from that wise man. Then let them say from what source they were able even to know or hear that He was most wise.
If it is by the spreading of report, is report a surer messenger about Him than His own disciples, by whose preaching that very report blazed forth throughout the whole world? In the end let them set report against report, and believe that report about Him which is the greater. For indeed the report which, concerning the Catholic Church that they marvel to see diffused over the whole earth, is scattered abroad with wondrous brightness, incomparably outdoes the thin rumours of these men. Moreover, that report, so great and so celebrated that these men, dreading it, gnaw within their own bosoms their trembling and lukewarm little contradictions — now more afraid of being heard than desirous of being believed — proclaims Christ to be the only-begotten Son of God and God, through whom all things were made. If therefore they choose report as their witness, why do they not choose this one, which shines out with such great brightness?
If they choose Scripture, why not the Gospel Scripture, which prevails with such great authority? We at least believe about their gods those things which their own Scripture, more ancient, and their report, more widely celebrated, contain. And if these things are to be adored, why do they laugh at them in the theatres? But if they are to be laughed at, still more are they to be laughed at when they are adored in the temples. It remains, then, that these men should be willing to be witnesses about Christ — men who rob themselves of the credit of knowing what they say, by speaking what they do not know. Or if they claim to possess certain books which they assert He wrote, let them produce them for us. For surely they must be most useful and most wholesome, seeing that, as they themselves confess, a most wise man wrote them. But if they are afraid to bring them forth, then certainly they are evil; and further, if they are evil, then no most wise man wrote them;
but they confess Christ to be most wise: therefore Christ wrote no such thing. Yet these men are so senseless that they say those books, which they suppose He wrote, contain the arts by which they think He worked those miracles whose fame has spread everywhere. And by such a supposition they betray what they themselves love and long after — since indeed they think Christ was most wise for the very reason that He knew (so they imagine) certain unlawful things, which not only Christian discipline but even the administration of an earthly commonwealth rightly condemns. And surely those who affirm that they have read such books of Christ — why do they themselves do no such things as they marvel that He did from such books?
What too of the fact that by a certain divine judgement some of them so err — those who either believe or wish it to be believed that Christ wrote such things — that they say those same books were inscribed to Peter and Paul, as though with an epistolary heading? And it may be that certain enemies of the name of Christ, or men who thought that by such execrable arts they could lend the weight of authority to so glorious a name, wrote such things under the name of Christ and of the apostles. In which most deceitful audacity they have been so blinded that they are deservedly laughed at even by boys who, still in a boyish way, know the Christian writings in the rank of readers.
For when they wished to fabricate that Christ had written some such thing to His disciples, they considered to whom it might most readily be believed He could have written — namely to those who had clung to Him most intimately, to whom that as it were secret matter might worthily be committed; and Peter and Paul occurred to them, because, I suppose, they had seen these two depicted together with Him in many places, since Rome commemorates the merits of Peter and Paul the more famously and solemnly on account of the very same day of their passion. Thus they thoroughly deserved to err — men who sought Christ and His apostles not in the holy books but on painted walls; and no wonder if, being inventors, they were deceived by painters.
For during the whole time that Christ lived in mortal flesh with His disciples, Paul was not yet His disciple; Him, after His passion, after His resurrection, after His ascension, after the sending of the Holy Spirit from heaven, after the conversion and wondrous faith of many Jews, after the stoning of Stephen the deacon and martyr — while he was still called Saul and was grievously persecuting those who had believed in Christ — He called from heaven and made His disciple and apostle. How therefore could He have written books (which they wish it to be thought He wrote before He died) to His disciples Peter and Paul as to His most intimate friends, when Paul was not yet His disciple?
Let those also consider this — those who rave that by magical arts He was able to do such great things and by that very art consecrated His own name so as to turn the peoples toward Himself — whether by magical arts He could have filled, before He was born on earth, with the divine Spirit so many prophets, who foretold about Him such things to come as we now read already past in the Gospel, and such things present as we now see throughout the whole world. For if by magical arts He brought it about that He should be worshipped even when dead, He was not a magician before He was born — He, for whose prophesied coming a single nation was appointed, whose whole commonwealth in its entire administration was a prophecy of that King who was to come and to found for Himself a heavenly city out of all nations.
Accordingly, of that Hebrew nation, appointed (as I said) to prophesy Christ, there was no other god save the one God, the true God, who made heaven and earth and all things that are in them. Having offended Him, they were often made subject to their enemies; and now too, for the most grievous crime of having slain Christ, they have been utterly rooted out from Jerusalem itself, which was the capital of their kingdom, and subjugated to the Roman empire. Now the Romans were accustomed, concerning the gods of the nations they subdued, to propitiate them so as to be worshipped, and to take up their sacred rites. This they refused to do concerning the God of the Hebrew nation, whether they assailed it or conquered it.
I believe it was because they saw that, if they received the sacred rites of that God who commanded that He alone be worshipped, and even that idols be destroyed, they would have to abandon all those things which they had before undertaken to worship — by whose religions they supposed their empire had grown. In this the deceit of the demons deceived them most of all. For assuredly they ought to have understood that their kingdom had been given and increased by the hidden will of the true God, in whose hands is the sovereign power over all things, and not by the favour of those gods; who, if they had had any power in this matter, would rather have protected their own so that they might not be overcome by the Romans, or would have subdued those very Romans and brought them into subjection. For neither can they say that their piety and morals were loved and chosen by the gods of the nations whom they conquered.
They will never say this, if they recall their own beginnings — the asylum of criminals and the fratricide of Romulus. For neither, when Remus and Romulus established the asylum, so that whoever was guilty of any crime might flee thither having committed much, did they give precepts of repentance for the saving of the souls of the wretched; but rather they armed with the reward of impunity a hand of fearful men gathered against their own cities, whose laws they feared. Nor, when Romulus killed his brother, who had perpetrated no evil against him, did he have in mind the justice of avenging rather than the sovereignty of ruling. Did the gods, then, love such morals — gods hostile to their own cities by favouring the enemies of those cities?
Nay rather, neither by defending those cities did they press upon them, nor by going over to these Romans did they help them at all; for they have not in their power to give and take away a kingdom, but the one and true God does this by a hidden judgement — not about to make blessed forthwith those to whom He has given an earthly kingdom, nor forthwith wretched those from whom He has taken it away, but making men blessed or wretched for another reason and from another source. He distributes temporal and earthly kingdoms to whom He wills and for as long as He wills, according to the predestined order of the ages, either by permitting or by granting. Hence neither can they say: Why, then, did the God of the Hebrews, whom you call the supreme and true God, not only not subjugate the Romans to them, but not even help the Hebrews themselves, that they might not be subjugated by the Romans?
For their manifest sins went before, on account of which the prophets had so long beforehand foretold to them that this would come; and chiefly because with impious fury they slew Christ, in which sin they were blinded through the deserts of their other hidden sins. That His passion would be of profit to the nations was foretold by the same prophetic attestation. Nor did anything else make more manifest that the kingdom and temple and priesthood and sacrifice of that nation, and that mystic anointing which in Greek is called chrism —
whence the name of Christ shines forth, and on account of which that very nation called its kings 'christs' (anointed) — that all these had been appointed for nothing else than to foretell Christ. This is shown by the fact that, after the resurrection of the slain Christ began to be preached to the believing nations, all those things ceased — the Romans not knowing it, through whose victory, and the Jews not knowing it, through whose subjugation, it came about that those things ceased. The few pagans who have remained do not notice this truly marvellous thing: that the God of the Hebrews, offended by the vanquished and not received by the victors, is now proclaimed and worshipped by all nations. For He is the God of Israel, of whom, so long before, the prophet thus addressed the people of God: 'And He who has delivered you, the God of Israel, shall be called the God of the whole earth.'
This has been accomplished through the name of Christ, who came to men from the very seed of Israel, who was the grandson of Abraham, from whom the nation of the Hebrews began; for to Israel himself also it was said: 'And in your seed shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed.'
Hence it is shown that the God of Israel, the one God who made heaven and earth, cares for human affairs justly and mercifully — in such a way that justice does not shut out mercy, nor mercy hinder justice — and that He Himself was not conquered in His Hebrew people, in that He permitted their kingdom and priesthood to be assailed and destroyed by the Romans; since indeed, through the Gospel of Christ, the true King and Priest (which that kingdom and priesthood prefigured as things to come), the God of Israel Himself now everywhere destroys the idols of the nations — the very idols which, that they might not be destroyed, the Romans refused to receive His sacred rites, just as they received the rites of the gods of other nations whom they conquered.