Doctor Faustus Faustus Quotes

ARCHBISHOP
Please it, your Holiness, I think it be some ghost crept out of purgatory and now is come unto your Holiness for his pardon.
POPE
It may be so.
Go then; command our priests to sing a dirge
To lay the fury of this same troublesome ghost.
        [Exit an Attendant. The Pope crosses himself.]
FAUSTUS
How now! Must every bit be spiced with a cross? (3.2.80-86)

The Pope and his cronies just keep getting more and more ridiculous. In this passage, they believe that the invisible Faustus is a soul that's come out of Purgatory to haunt them all. And this mention of Purgatory is yet another reminder of the rather negative view Protestants held of the Catholic Church. Many Protestants believed that Purgatory didn't exist. It was just as absurd to them as the other rituals the Pope and Archbishop participate in here—exorcism and crossing oneself. Faustus can't resist mocking the Pope for these habits and beliefs.

Faustus > Mephistopheles

Quote 11

FAUSTUS
Was not that Lucifer an angel once?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Yes Faustus, and most dearly loved of God.
FAUSTUS
How comes it, then, that he is prince of devils?
MEPHISTOPHELES
O, by aspiring pride and insolence,
For which God threw him from the face of heaven. (1.3.61-66)

Hmmm. Pride and insolence? Those sins sound awfully familiar. In fact, they sound just like the traits Faustus has. So if those happen to be the sins that got the devil kicked out of heaven, shouldn't Faustus get the hint? This exchange should be a warning to Faustus about the wages of sin but, of course, he ignores it.

Faustus > Faustus

Quote 12

FAUSTUS
The god thou serv'st is thine own appetite,
Wherein is fixed the love of Beelzebub,
To him I'll build an altar and a church
And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes. (2.1.10-13)

What Faustus proposes to do here is exactly the opposite of the first commandment: to take other gods before God. These gods don't necessarily have to be Old Testament-type idols (which is what the ten commandments were warning against). They can be anything a person loves more than God, in this case, Faustus's own appetite. Yet Faustus expresses his worship in a very Old Testament way. He wants to build an altar and undergo human sacrifice. The point of this is probably to emphasize that despite how innovative Faustus thinks he's being by rejecting the old traditions in favor of magic, his sin is the very same Old Testament idol worship. In other words, Faustus, we've been there, done that.