ST. AUGUSTIN: AGAINST THE EPISTLE OF MANICHÆUS CALLED FUNDAMENTAL. [CONTRA EPISTOLAM MANICHEI QUAM VOCANT FUNDAMENTUM]. A.D. 397. TRANSLATED BY REV. RICHARD STOTHERT, M.A., BOMBAY. CHAP. XII.-The wild fancies of Manichæus. The battle before the constitution of the world. CHAP. XIII.-Two opposite substances. The Kingdom of Light. Manichæus teaches uncertainties CHAP. XV. The doctrine of Manichæus not only uncertain, but false. His absurd fancy of a land and race of darkness bordering on the Holy Region and the substance of God. The error, first of all, of giving to the nature of God limits and borders, as if God were a material substance, having CHAP. XVII. The memory contains the ideas of places of the greatest size. CHAP. XVIII.-The understanding judges of the truth of things, and of its own action. CHAP. XIX.-If the mind has no material extension, much less has God. of the region of darkness joined to the region of light. CHAP. XXII.-The form of the region of light the worst of the two. CHAP. XXIII.—The Anthropomorphites not so bad as the Manichæans. CHAP. XXIV.-Of the number of natures in the Manichean fiction. CHAP. XXV.—Omnipotence creates good things differing in degree. In every description whatsoever of the junction of the two regions there is either impropriety or absurdity. CHAP. XXVI.-The Manichæans are reduced to the choice of a tortuous, or curved, or straight line of junction. The third kind of line would give symmetry and beauty suitable to both regions. CHAP. XXVII.-The beauty of the straight line might be taken from the region of darkness without taking anything from its substance. So evil neither takes from nor adds to the substance of the soul. The straightness of its side would be so far a good bestowed on the region of darkness by CHAP. XXVIII.—Manichæus places five natures in the region of darkness. CHAP. XXXIV.-Nature cannot be without some good. The Manichæans dwell upon the evils. CHAP. XXXV.-Evil alone is corruption. Corruption is not nature, but contrary to nature. Corrup- CHAP. XL.-Corruption tends to non-existence. CHAP. XLI.-Corruption is by God's permission, and comes from us. PAGE AGAINST THE OF MANICHEUS CALLED FUNDAMENTAL.' [CONTRA EPISTOLAM MANICHÆI QUAM VACANT FUNDAMENTI.] A.D. 397. CHAP. I.—TO HEAL HERETICS IS BETTER THAN things which serve for bodily punishment, as TO DESTROY THEM. fire, poison, disease, and the rest, and other things, in which the mind is punished, not by bodily distress, but by the entanglements of its own passions, such as loss, exile, bereavement, reproach, and the like; while other things, again, without tormenting are fitted to comfort and soothe the languishing, as, for example, consolations, exhortations, discussions, and such things; in all these the 1. My prayer to the one true, almighty God, of whom, and through whom, and in whom are all things, has been, and is now, that in opposing and refuting the heresy of you Manichæans, as you may after all be heretics more from thoughtlessness than from malice, He would give me a mind calm and composed, and aiming at your recovery rather than at your discomfiture. For while the supreme justice of God makes use sometimes even of wicked men, acting in ignorance, and Lord, by His servants, overthrows the king-sometimes of good men, acting intelligently. doms of error, His will concerning erring It is ours, accordingly, to desire in preference men, as far as they are men, is that they the better part, that we might attain our end should be amended rather than destroyed. in your correction, not by contention, and And in every case where, previous to the strife, and persecutions, but by kindly consofinal judgment, God inflicts punishment, lation, by friendly exhortation, by quiet diswhether through the wicked or the righteous, cussion; as it is written, "The servant of the whether through the unintelligent or through the intelligent, whether in secret or openly, we must believe that the designed effect is the healing of men, and not their ruin; while there is a preparation for the final doom in the case of those who reject the means of recovery. Thus, as the universe contains some 1 Written about the year 397. In his Retractations (ii. 2) Augustin says: "The book against the Epistle of Manichæus, called Fundamental, refutes only its commencement; but on the other parts of the epistle I have made notes, as required, refuting the whole, and sufficient to recall the argument, had I ever had leisure to write against the wh le." The Fundamental Epistle seems to have been a sort of hand-book for Manichæan catechumens or Auditors. In making this document the basis of his attack, Augustin felt that he had selected the best-known and most generally accepted standard of the Manichæan faith. The tone of the work is conciliatory, yet some very sharp thrusts are made at Manichæan error. The claims of Mani to be the Paraclete are set aside, and the absurd cosmological fancies of Mani are ruthlessly exposed. Dualism is combated with substantially the same weapons as in the treatise Concerning Two Souls. We could wish that the author had found time to finish the treatise, and had thus preserved for us more of the Fundamental Epistle itself. This work was written after the author had become Bishop of Hippo.-A. H. N.] Lord must not strive; but be gentle toward all men, apt to teach, patient; in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves." 2 It is ours, I say, to desire to obtain this part in the work; it belongs to God to give what is good to those who desire it and ask for it. CHAP. 2.-WHY THE MANICHEANS SHOULD BE 2. Let those rage against you who know not with what labor the truth is to be found and with what difficulty error is to be avoided. Let those rage against you who know not how rare and hard it is to overcome the fancies of the flesh by the serenity of a pious disposition. Let those rage against you who know not the difficulty of curing the eye of the inner man that he may gaze upon his Sun,-not that sun 22 Tim. ii. 24, 25. |