part of his cursed body, and then hand it you hold that plants have a purer soul than over to bondage and torture in other forms? animals? There is a compensation, we are If this is true, how cruel you are! If not, told, when part of what is taken from the how silly! What can be more contrary to fields is given to the elect and the saints to your opinions than to break the symbol? be purified. This has already been refuted; What can be more unkind to the member of and it has, I think, been proved sufficiently God than to keep it? that there is no reason for saying that more 58. This supposes the truth of your false of the good part is found in vegetables than and vain ideas. But you can be shown guilty in flesh. But should any one support himself of plain and positive cruelty flowing from the by selling butcher-meat, and spend the whole same error. For were any one lying on the profit of his business in purchasing food for road, his body wasted with disease, weary your elect, and bring larger supplies for those with journeying, and half-dead from his saints than any peasant or farmer, will he not sufferings, and able only to utter some broken plead this compensation as a warrant for his words, and if eating a pear would do him good killing animals? But there is, we are told, as an astringent, and were he to beg you to some other mysterious reason; for a cunning help him as you passed by, and were he to man can always find some resource in the implore you to bring the fruit from a neigh- secrets of nature when addressing unlearned boring tree, with no divine or human prohibi- people. The story, then, is that the heavenly tion to prevent your doing so, while the man princes who were taken from the race of is sure to die for the want of it, you, a Chris- darkness and bound, and have a place astian man and a saint, will rather pass on and signed them in this region by the Creator of abandon a man thus suffering and entreating, the world, have animals on the earth speclest the tree should lament the loss of its ially belonging to them, each having those fruit, and you should be doomed to the coming from his own stock and class; and punishment threatened by Manichæus for they hold the slaughterers of those animals breaking the symbol. Strange customs, and strange harmlessness!

59. Now, as regards killing animals, and the reasons for your opinion, much that has been said will apply also to this. For what harm will be done to the soul of a wolf by killing the wolf, since the wolf, as long as it lives, will be a wolf, and will not listen to any preacher, or give up, in the least. shedding the blood of sheep; and, by killing it, the rational soul, as you think, will be set free from its confinement in the body? But you make this slaughter unlawful even for your followers; for you think it worse than that of trees. And in this there is not much fault to be found with your senses,—that is, your bodily senses. For we see and hear by their cries that animals die with pain, although man disregards this in a beast, with which, as not having a rational soul, we have no community of rights. But as to your senses in the observation of trees, you must be entirely blind. For not to mention that there are no movements in the wood expressive of pain, what is clearer than that a tree is never better than when it is green and flourishing, gay with flowers, and rich in fruit? And this comes generally and chiefly from pruning. But if it felt the iron, as you suppose, it ought to die of wounds so many, so severe, instead of sprouting at the places, and reviving with such manifest delight.

60. But why do you think it a greater crime to destroy animals than plants, although

guilty, and do not allow them to leave the earth, but harass them as much as they can with pains and torments. What simple man will not be frightened by this, and, seeing nothing in the darkness shrouding these things, will not think that the fact is as described? But I will hold to my purpose, with God's help, to rebut mysterious falsehood by the plainest truth.

61. Tell me, then, if animals on land and in water come in regular succession by ordinary generation from this race of princes, since the origin of animal life is traced to the abortive births in that race;--tell me, I say, whether bees and frogs, and many other creatures not sprung from sexual intercourse,' may be killed with impunity. We are told they cannot. So it is not on account of their relation to certain princes that you forbid your followers to kill animals. Or if you make a general relationship to all bodies, the princes would be equally concerned about trees, which you do not require your followers to spare. You are brought back to the weak reply, that the injuries done in the case of plants are atoned for by the fruits which your followers bring to your church. For this implies that those who slaughter animals, and sell their flesh in the market, if they are your followers, and if they bring to you vegetables bought with their gains, may think nothing

of the daily slaughter, and are cleared of any sin that may be in it by your repasts.

62. But if you say that, in order to expiate the slaughter, the thing must be given as food, as in the case of fruits and vegetables,-which cannot be done, because the elect do not eat flesh, and so your followers must not slaughter animals,—what reply will you give in the case of thorns and weeds, which farmers destroy in clearing their fields, while they cannot bring any food to you from them? How can there be pardon for such destruction, which gives no nourishment to the saints? Perhaps you also put away any sin committed, for the benefit of the fruits and vegetables, by eating some of these. What then if the fields are plundered by locusts, mice, or rats, as we see often happen? Can your rustic follower kill these with impunity, because he sins for the good of his crops? Here you are at a loss; for you either allow your followers to kill animals, which your founder prohibited, or you forbid them to be cultivators, which he made lawful. Indeed, you sometimes go so far as to say that an usurer is more harmless than a cultivator,—you feel so much more for melons than for men. Rather than hurt the melons, you would have a man ruined as a debtor.

therefore to consider these animals, and others that it would be tedious to specify, more unclean than your lice; and yet you think it sinful to kill them, though it would be foolish not to kill the lice. Perhaps you hold the lice cheap because they are small. But if an animal is to be valued by its size, you must prefer a camel to a man.

64. Here we may use the gradation which often perplexed us when we were your followers. For if a flea may be killed on account of its small size, so may the fly which is bred in beans. And if this, so also may one of a little larger size, for its size at birth is even less. Then again, a bee may be killed, for its young is no larger than a fly. So on to the young of a locust, and to a locust; and then to the young of a mouse, and to a mouse. And, to cut short, it is clear we may come at last to an elephant; so that one who thinks it no sin to kill a flea, because of its small size, must allow that it would be no sin in him to kill this huge creature. But I think enough has been said of these absurdities.

CHAP. 18. OF THE SYMBOL OF THE BREAST,

AND OF THE SHAMEFUL MYSTERIES OF THE

MANICHEANS. Is this desirable and praiseworthy justice, or not rather atrocious and damnable error? Is this commendable compassion, or not rather detestable barbarity?

65. Lastly, there is the symbol of the breast, in which your very questionable chastity consists. For though you do not 63. What, again, of your not abstaining forbid sexual intercourse, you, as the apostle. yourselves from the slaughter of lice, bugs, long ago said, forbid marriage in the proper and fleas? You think it a sufficient excuse sense, although this is the only good excuse for this to say that these are the dirt of our for such intercourse. No doubt you will exbodies. But this is clearly untrue of fleas claim against this, and will make it a reproach and bugs; for every one knows that these against us that you highly esteem and approve animals do not come from our bodies. perfect chastity, but do not forbid marriage, Besides, if you abhor sexual intercourse as because your followers—that is, those in the much as you pretend to do, you should think second grade among you are allowed to those animals all the cleaner which come have wives. After you have said this with from our bodies without any other genera- great noise and heat, I will quietly ask, Is tion; for although they produce offspring of it not you who hold that begetting children, their own, they are not produced in ordinary by which souls are confined in flesh, is a generation from us. Again, if we must con- greater sin than cohabitation? Is it not you sider as most filthy the production of living who used to counsel us to observe as much bodies, still worse must be the production of as possible the time when a woman, after her dead bodies. There must be less harm, there- purification, is most likely to conceive, and fore, in killing a rat, a snake, or a scorpion, to abstain from cohabitation at that time, lest which you constantly say come from our dead the soul should be entangled in flesh? This bodies. But to pass over what is less plain proves that you approve of having a wife, not and certain, it is a common opinion regard- for the procreation of children, but for the ing bees that they come from the carcases of gratification of passion. In marriage, as the oxen; so there is no harm in killing them. marriage law declares, the man and woman Or if this too is doubted, every one allows that come together for the procreation of children. beetles, at least, are bred in the ball of mud Therefore whoever makes the procreation of which they make and bury. You ought children a greater sin than copulation, forbids marriage, and makes the woman not a wife, 1 V. Retract. i. 7, § 6, where Augustin allows that this is doubt-but a mistress, who for some gifts presented

ful, and that many have not even heard of it.

to her is joined to the man to gratify his all, if he were at all able to enlarge, would passion. Where there is a wife there must require at least a separate treatise for each. be marriage. But there is no marriage where Were you to observe these, and to act up to motherhood is not in view; therefore neither your profession, no childishness, or folly, or is there a wife. In this way you forbid absurdity would go beyond yours; and when marriage. Nor can you defend yourselves you praise and teach these things without successfully from this charge, long ago brought doing them, you display craft and deceit and against you prophetically by the Holy Spirit. malevolence equal to anything that can be 66. Moreover, when you are so eager in described or imagined. your desire to prevent the soul from being confined in flesh by conjugal intercourse, and so eager in asserting that the soul is set free from seed by the food of the saints, do you not sanction, unhappy beings, the suspicion entertained about you? For why should it be true regarding corn and beans and lentils and other seeds, that when you eat them you wish to set free the soul, and not true of the seeds of animals? For what you say of the flesh of a dead animal, that it is unclean because there is no soul in it, cannot be said of the seed of the animal; for you hold that it keeps confined the soul which will appear in the offspring, and you avow that the soul of Manichæus himself is thus confined. And as your followers cannot bring these seeds to you for purification, who will not suspect that you make this purification secretly among yourselves, and hide it from your followers, in case they should leave you? If you do not these things, as it is to be hoped you do not, still you see how open to suspicion your superstition is, and how impossible it is to blame men for thinking what your own profession suggests, when you maintain that you set free souls from bodies and from senses by eating and drinking. I wish to say no more about this: you see yourselves what room there is here for denunciation. But as the matter is one rather to repress than to invite remark, and also as throughout my discourse my purpose appears of exaggerating nothing, and of keeping to bare facts and arguments, we shall pass on to other matters.

I

CHAP. 19.--CRIMES OF THE MANICHEANS.

67. We see then, now, the nature of your three symbols. These are your customs. This is the end of your notable precepts, in which there is nothing sure, nothing steadfast, nothing consistent, nothing irreproachable, but all doubtful, or rather undoubtedly and entirely false, all contradictory, abominable, absurd. In a word, evil practices are detected in your customs so many and so serious, that one wishing to denounce them

1[Compare what is said about the disgusting ceremonial of

Ischas by Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat. vi.), Augustin (Haeres. xlvi.),

Pope Leo X. (Serm. V. de Jejuniis, X. Mens.). These charges were probably unfounded, though they are not altogether out of harmony with the Manichæan principles.-A. H. N.]

68. During nine full years that I attended you with great earnestness and assiduity, I could not hear of one of your elect who was not found transgressing these precepts, or at least was not suspected of doing so. Many were caught at wine and animal food, many at the baths; but this we only heard by report. Some were proved to have seduced other men's wives, so that in this case I could not doubt the truth of the charge. But suppose this, too, a report rather than a fact. I myself saw, and not I only, but others who have either escaped from that superstition, or will, I hope, yet escape,-we saw, I say, in a square in Carthage, on a road much frequented, not one, but more than three of the elect walking behind us, and accosting some women with such indecent sounds and gestures as to outdo the boldness and insolence of all ordinary rascals. And it was clear that this was quite habitual, and that they behaved in this way to one another, for no one was deterred by the presence of a companion,showing that most of them, if not all, were affected with this evil tendency. For they did not all come from one house, but lived in quite different places, and quite accidentally left together the place where they had met. It was a great shock to us, and we lodged a complaint about it. But who thought of inflicting punishment,-I say not by separation from the church, but even by severe rebuke in proportion to the heinousness of the offence?

69. All the excuse given for the impunity of those men was that, at that time, when their meetings were forbidden by law, it was feared that the persons suffering punishment might retaliate by giving information. What then of their assertion that they will always have persecution in this world, for which they suppose that they will be thought the more of? for this is the application they make of the words about the world hating them. And they will have it that truth must be sought for among them, because, in the promise of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, it is said that the world cannot receive Him.3 This is not the

place to discuss this question. But clearly,

if you are always to be persecuted, even to the end of the world, there will be no end to this laxity, and to the unchecked spread of all this immorality, from your fear of giving offence to men of this character.

itself so keenly, and inevitably raised a suspicion of other things.'

72. Another thing was, that we very often saw in theatres men belonging to the elect, men of years and, it was supposed, of char70. This answer was also given to us, when acter, along with a hoary-headed elder We we reported to the very highest authorities that pass over the youths, whom we used to come a woman had complained to us that in a meet-upon quarrelling about the people connected ing, where she was along with other women, with the stage and the races; from which we not doubting of the sanctity of these people, may safely conclude how they would be able some of the elect came in, and when one of to refrain in secret, when they could not them had put out the lamp, one, whom she subdue the passion by which they were exposed could not distinguish, tried to embrace her, in the eyes of their followers, bringing on and would have forced her into sin, had she them disgrace and flight. In the case of the not escaped by crying out. How common saint, whose discussions we attended in the must we conclude the practice to have been street of the fig-sellers, would his atrocious which led to the misdeed on this occasion! crime have been discovered if he had been And this was done on the night when you able to make the dedicated virgin his wife keep the feast of vigils. Forsooth, besides without making her pregnant? The swelling the fear of information being given, no one womb betrayed the secret and unthought-of could bring the offender before the bishop, as iniquity. When her brother, a young man, he had so well guarded against being re- heard of it from his mother, he felt keenly cognized. As if all who entered along with the injury, but refrained, from regard to him were not implicated in the crime; for in religion, from a public accusation. He suctheir indecent merriment they all wished the ceeded in getting the man expelled from that lamp to be put out. church, for such conduct cannot always be tolerated; and that the crime might not be wholly unpunished, he arranged with some of his friends to have the man well beaten and kicked. When he was thus assailed, he cried out that they should spare him, from regard to the authority of the opinion of Manichæus, that Adam the first hero had sinned, and was a greater saint after his sin.

71. Then what wide doors were opened for suspicions, when we saw them full of envy, full of covetousness, full of greed for costly foods, constantly at strife, easily excited about trifles! We concluded that they were not competent to abstain from the things they professed to abstain from, if they found an opportunity in secret or in the dark. There were two of sufficiently good character, of 73. This, in fact, is your notion about active minds, and leaders in their debates, Adam and Eve.2 It is a long story; but I with whom we had a more particular and will touch only on what concerns the present intimate acquaintance than with the rest. matter. You say that Adam was produced One of them was much associated with us, | from his parents, the abortive princes of because he was also engaged in liberal studies; darkness; that he had in his soul the most he is said to be now an elder there. These part of light, and very little of the opposite two were very jealous of one another, and one race. So while he lived a holy life, on acaccused the other-not openly, but in con- count of the prevalence of good, still the versation, as he had opportunity, and in opposite part in him was stirred up, so that whispers of having made a criminal assault on the wife of one of the followers. He again, in clearing himself to us, brought the same charge against another of the elect, who lived with this follower as his most trusted friend. He had, going in suddenly, caught this man with the woman, and his enemy and rival had advised the woman and her paramour to raise this false report about him, that he might not be believed if he gave any information. We were much distressed, and took it greatly to heart, that although there was a doubt about the assault on the woman, the jealous feeling in those two men, than whom we found none better in the place, showed

he was led away into conjugal intercourse. Thus he fell and sinned, but afterwards lived in greater holiness. Now, my complaint is not so much about this wicked man, who, under the garb of an elect and holy man, brought such shame and reproach on a family of strangers by his shocking immorality. I do not charge you with this. Let it be attributed to the abandoned character of the man, and not to your habits. I blame the man for the atrocity, and not you. Still there is

chæans; but there must have been a considerable basis of fact for his charges.-A. H. N.]

1 Doubtless Augustin exaggerates the immorality of the Mani

2 Compare the account from the Fihrist, in our Introduction,

Chapter III.-A. H. N.]

this in you all that cannot, as far as I can high authority enjoined.

The follower all

see, be admitted or tolerated, that while you the time was zealously enforcing everything hold the soul to be part of God, you still on everybody, though never, in any case, maintain that the mixture of a little evil pre- what he did not undertake himself. Meanvailed over the superior force and quantity while quarrels constantly arose among the of good. Who that believes this, when incited by passion, will not find here an excuse, instead of checking and controlling his passion?

CHAP. 20.-DISGRACEFUL CONDUCT DISCOVERED

AT ROME.

elect. They charged one another with crimes, all which he lamented to hear, and managed to make them unintentionally expose one another in their altercations. The revelations were vile beyond description. Thus appeared the true character of those who were unlike the rest in being willing to bend to the yoke of the precepts. What then is

74. What more shall I say of your customs? I have mentioned what I found my- to be suspected, or rather, concluded, of the self when I was in the city when the things others? To come to a close, they gathered were done. To go through all that happened together on one occasion and complained that at Rome in my absence would take a long they could not keep the regulations. Then time. I will, however, give a short account came rebellion. The follower stated his case of it; for the matter became so notorious, most concisely, that either all must be kept, that even the absent could not remain in ig- or the man who had given such a sanction to norance of it. And when I was afterwards in such precepts, which no one could fulfill, must Rome, I ascertained the truth of all I had be thought a great fool. But, as was ineviheard, although the story was told me by an table, the wild clamor of the mob prevailed eye-witness whom I knew so well and esteemed over the opinion of one man. The bishop so highly, that I could not feel any doubt himself gave way at last, and took to flight about it. One of your followers, then, quite with great disgrace; and he was said to have equal to the elect in their far-famed absti- got in provisions by stealth, contrary to rule, nence, for he was both liberally educated, and which were often discovered. He had a was in the habit of defending your sect with supply of money from his private purse, great zeal, took it very ill that he had cast in which he carefully kept concealed. his teeth the vile conduct of the elect, who 75. If you say these things are false, you lived in all kinds of places, and went hither contradict what is too clear and public. But and thither for lodging of the worst descrip- you may say so if you like. For, as the tion. He therefore desired, if possible, to things are certain, and easily known by those assemble all who were willing to live accord- who wish to know them, those who deny that ing to the precepts into his own house, and they are true show what their habit of telling to maintain them at his own expense; for he the truth is. But you have other replies was above the average in carelessness as to with which I do not find fault. For you either spending money, besides being above the say that some do keep your precepts, and average in the amount he had to spend. He that they should not be mixed up with the complained that his efforts were hindered by guilty in condemning the others; or that the the remissness of the bishops, whose assist- whole inquiry into the character of the memance he required for success. At last one of bers of your sect is wrong, for the question your bishops was found,—a man, as I know, is of the character of the profession. Should very rude and unpolished, but somehow, I grant both of these (although you can from his very moroseness, the more inclined neither point out those faithful observers of to strict observance of morality. The follower eagerly lays hold of this man as the person he had long wished for and found at last, and relates his whole plan. He approves and assents, and agrees to be the first to take up his abode in the house. When this was done, all the elect who could be at Rome were assembled there. The rule of life in the epistle of Manichæus was laid before them. Many thought it intolerable, and left; not a few felt ashamed, and stayed. They began to live as they had agreed, and as this

the precepts, nor clear your heresy of all those frivolities and iniquities), still I must insist on knowing why you heap reproaches on Christians of the Catholic name on seeing the immoral life of some, while you either have the effrontery to repel inquiry about your members, or the still greater effrontery not to repel it, wishing it to be understood that in your scanty membership there are some unknown individuals who keep the precepts they profess, but that among the multitudes in the Catholic Church there are none.