De fide Contra Manicheos

1. Evodius, On the Faith Against the Manicheans. There is one God: Father and Son and Holy Spirit, invisible, incomprehensible, ineffable, inviolable, unpollutable, who alone possesses immortality and light, and dwells in an inaccessible place. He is the true light, life and truth, good, supreme, and whatever human speech can utter concerning Him—which things, nevertheless, are given by Him, so that they can be spoken in some way. From Him are all things, through Him are all things, whether Thrones or Dominations or Principalities or Powers; and all things were created through Him and in Him, as is revealed to those who humbly and piously seek in both Testaments. Glory to Him through the ages of ages. Amen. Against this, Manichaeus posits as an adversary some sort of prince of the race of darkness, whom he also asserts to be unbegotten and to have no author by whom he was created. And certainly, if he is unbegotten and not created, he is immortal through himself. And if he is immortal through himself, then God will not be the one who alone possesses immortality, and the Apostle, who says of God that He alone possesses immortality, will be a liar. But because the Apostle is not a liar, God alone possesses immortality. And therefore He alone is able to bestow immortality upon the souls and, when He wills, upon bodies.

It is false, therefore, what Manichaeus asserts, that some nature of evil with its prince has no author, but is unbegotten. Next, if God is unbegotten, and the race of darkness is also unbegotten, then unbegotten and unbegotten, seeing and seeing, ruling and ruling, living and living, eternal and eternal will not be contrary. And if good and evil are contrary, then good will disagree with evil in some respect; but in many respects it will be joined and concordant, and evil will no longer be pure evil, having so many things in common with God. If they say, “It is unbegotten in its own realm,” they say nothing. For unbegotten and unbegotten, eternal and eternal: insofar as they are unbegotten and eternal, they were never contrary. For is a ditch-digger not a man, because the emperor is a man, just because the emperor is great in his power and the ditch-digger is contemptible in his work? But if anyone asks what evil is, let him hear the apostle saying: “The root of all evils is covetousness,” which some, by pursuing it, have strayed from the faith and entangled themselves in many sorrows.

Cupidity, however, in each individual human is not natural but voluntary, and therefore he said "which some pursue." For what is obtained by pursuit, if it were not pursued, would not be possessed. For even the Lord, showing that it is within human power, says: either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. Also in the Acts written by Leucius, which they themselves accept, it is written thus: for the beautiful fictions and feigned display and compulsion of visible things do not proceed from their own nature, but from the human being, who has become worse through himself by seduction. Even Manichaeus himself could not but confess that souls, even those which he says belong to the substance of God, sin by their own will. For thus in the second book of the Treasure he says: but those who, by their own negligence, have allowed themselves to be least purified from the stain of the aforementioned spirits, and have obeyed the divine commandments too little, and have not wished to keep more fully the law given to them by their liberator, nor, as was fitting, have governed themselves, and so forth. Likewise in the Letter of the Foundation he speaks thus about those souls: which, by love of the world, have allowed themselves to err from their former luminous nature, and have stood forth as enemies to the holy light, and have openly armed themselves for the destruction of the holy elements, and have been subjected to the fiery spirit.

even by their persecution afflicted the holy church and the elect established in it, the observers of the heavenly commandments, they are kept away from the blessedness and glory of the holy land. And because they allowed themselves to be overcome by evil, they will persist in that same root of evil, with that peaceful land and the immortal regions forbidden to them. This will happen to them because they have bound themselves with such wicked works that they were alienated from the life and freedom of the holy light. Therefore they will not be able to be received into those peaceful kingdoms, but will be confined in the aforementioned horrible globe, to which it is also necessary that a guard be assigned. Hence those same souls will cling to the things they loved, left behind in that same globe of darkness, procuring it for themselves by their own merits. For they did not strive to know these future things and to separate themselves from them, when time was given. I ask you, when these words are heard, do you still doubt that Manichaeus was compelled to confess that sin is of one's own will? For he did not say a single word about it, but so many that, even if one were in a deep sleep, he would wake him. He said: "by their own negligence"; he said: "they did not at all permit"; he said: "they obeyed too little"; he said: "they were unwilling to keep"; likewise he said: "they followed"; he said: "they allowed themselves to be overcome"; he said: "they bound themselves"; he said: "procuring it for themselves by their own merits"; he said: "for they did not strive to know these future things and to separate themselves from them, when time was given.

And do you hesitate to say that sin is committed by one's own will? Again, the same author says in the same epistle: "But the part cut off from the light, that is, sinful souls"—and do you not say that only the race of darkness sins? But why should I speak of him, who, although he was in error, nevertheless attempted to speak with the most evident truth? Since you refuse to understand our Lord Jesus Christ Himself when He says that fire is prepared for sinners and for the devil and his angels, all of whom He intended to be understood as sinners; for there is no injustice in God, that He would condemn those who have committed no sin. For what else is sinning but not standing in the precepts of truth or in truth itself? If sinners do not do this by their own will, they are unjustly judged. Moreover, that angels also pertain to judgment, the apostle shows when he says: "Do you not know that we shall judge angels?" But they would not pertain to judgment, by which they are judged, if they did not pertain to sin, by which they become guilty, nor could they be justly judged. For just men will not judge just angels, to whom they will be similar, but certainly they will judge sinners. Therefore, each person is the author of his own misdeed through desire.

It is therefore within one's power that desire exists, and thus evil is also within one's power. Therefore, what is within one's power is what ought not to be in the will; for evil cannot be a nature, nor a substance, nor a life, because these are good insofar as they exist. But if we call some people naturally evil, we say this on account of the origin of the old sin, in which our mortality is already born. Thus everything that is called evil in human beings is sin and punishment. Sin is committed by the rational soul, which has free choice of will; and punishment is inflicted by the justice of God, which does nothing unjustly. Against these truths the Manichaeans bark with their usual blindness; and when they are refuted that evil is not a nature, but that it is within a person's power to do good or evil, they say that the soul does not have free will and do not see their own blindness. For who would not cry out that it is foolish to give commands to one who does not have the freedom to do what is commanded, and that it is unjust to condemn one who did not have the power to fulfill what was ordered? And these wretches do not understand that they ascribe such injustices and iniquities to God. But what is true except that the Lord gives commands, that souls are of free will, that evil is not a nature but a turning away from God's commands, and that there is a just judgment of God by which He condemns those who sin?

Meanwhile, the same Manichaeus says that God abounds in all goods, that in his kingdoms there is no one lacking in his insignia or placed in a lowly station, and that his most splendid realms are so founded that they can never be shaken or moved by anyone. A little later in another passage he adds and says: "But the Father of the most blessed light, knowing the great stain and devastation that would arise from the darkness against his holy realms, unless he set against it some exceptional, illustrious, and powerful divinity, by which he might overcome and at the same time destroy the brood of darkness—once it is extinguished, peace would be prepared for the inhabitants of the light." Certainly, then, the kingdoms of Manichaeus's God could never be shaken or moved by anyone. For if they could have been, he lied in saying that those kingdoms cannot be shaken by anyone. And if they were shaken by necessity or fear, then he would not be God, who could be so shaken. For we see that the God of Manichaeus, according to the same Manichaeus, was oppressed by the evil of necessity, when the stain and devastation threatened his realms and he had nothing else to do, and he sent his own part into battle, so that in this way he might procure peace for the inhabitants of the light.

But that very part of him—that is, light from light, good from good, holy from holy, eternal from eternal, God from God, omnipotent from omnipotent—has been corrupted, has been mortified, has been mixed throughout all the bodies of the world from the highest to the lowest, from heaven to the filth, so that even prostitutes in the theaters and in even baser places have within them the oppressed God, who perhaps cannot be freed. For he says at the end of that same letter, from which we have already placed one chapter, that not the whole of that part of God which has been mixed in can be recalled to its former freedom. Behold the victory, behold the triumph, such as the God of Manichaeus has achieved. For after the loss of his own part he is in mourning, as the same Manichaeus says; he has a veil before him, which moderates his grief, so that he does not see the corruption of his own part. For today that divine substance which he mentions lies subject to the race of darkness like clay to a potter. This is written in their first book of the *Thesaurus*.

What sort of foulness, meanwhile, which he wrote in the same Treasure concerning other foul things in the seventh book, speaking thus: "Then that blessed father, who has shining ships, dwellings and habitations according to their sizes, out of the clemency inborn in him brings aid, by which his vital substance is stripped and freed from impious bonds and straits and anguishes. And so by his invisible nod he transforms those his powers, which are held in this most bright ship, and makes them yield to the hostile powers, which are arranged in the individual tracts of the heavens. Since these consist of both sexes, male and female, therefore he orders the aforesaid powers partly in the form of unclothed boys to yield to the hostile female race, partly in the form of shining virgins to the contrary male race, knowing that all these hostile powers, because of the deadly and most foul lust inborn in them, are very easily captured by these same most beautiful forms, which yield, and are enslaved, and in this way dissolved. Know, moreover, that this same blessed father of ours is the same thing as his powers, which for a necessary reason he transforms into the undefiled likeness of boys and virgins. He uses them, moreover, as his own weapons, and through them accomplishes his will.

Of these divine powers, however—which are established in the likeness of marriage against the infernal kinds, and which with alacrity and ease accomplish in the same moment whatever they have thought—the shining ships are full. And so, when reason demands that these same holy powers appear to males, they immediately display their own likeness in the garb of most beautiful virgins. Again, when the turn comes to females, setting aside the appearance of virgins, they show the appearance of unclothed boys. By this seemly sight, the ardor and concupiscence of those [females] increases, and in this way the bond of their worst thoughts is loosened, and the living soul, which was held in the members of the same [females], being released on this occasion, escapes and is mixed with its own purest air: where, once thoroughly washed, the souls ascend to the shining ships, which have been prepared for them for their conveyance and for their crossing to their own fatherland. That, however, which still bears the stains of the hostile kind, descends in small portions through heats and warmths, and is mixed with trees and the other plantings and all sowings, and is stained with various colors.

and in what manner from that great and most shining ship the figures of boys and virgins appear to the opposing powers, which dwell in the heavens and have a fiery nature, and from that seemly aspect the part of life that is held in their members is loosened and led down through the heats into the earth: in the same way also that most high power, which dwells in the ship of vital waters, appears in the likeness of holy boys and virgins through its angels to those powers whose nature is cold and moist and which are stationed in the heavens. And indeed to those which are female, in them the form of boys appears, but to the males, that of virgins. By this change and diversity of divine and most beautiful persons, the princes of the moist and cold stock, whether male or female, are dissolved, and that which is vital in them flees: but what remains is loosened and led down into the earth through the colds and is mixed with all the kinds of the earth.

Who would not laugh, or rather grieve and detest, that man for saying such horrible and execrable things about the divine substance? Therefore, according to your error, your teaching, the substance of eternal light—a part of God in captivity, in calamities, in hardships, in pressures, in filth and uncleanness—could not be helped daily in any other way, unless the blessed Father, who has luminous ships as his dwelling-places, whom you call the Third Legate, and the most high Power change their own powers into the nature of different sexes; which powers you indeed call undefiled, but yet, like prostitutes, they kindle with their beauty the deadly and most foul lust of the princes of darkness, confusedly intermingled. For you have not found a true way to speak of such great shamefulness more decently. And why do they do this? So that, with the princes stirred up to lust, the divine substance may find an occasion for liberation. What else does this mean, except that the divine majesty finds ways of escape even through the genitals of demons? Great God, help the minds of those who believe such shameful things, who follow such unspeakable practices! Who would not shudder at these things? I ask you. Who is so blind as to believe these things? I ask you.

But let it be answered to me by those who follow Manichaeus himself: if God is incorruptible, or every nature of the highest good is inviolable, unstainable, unapproachable, untaintable, incomprehensible: what evil could the nature of darkness do to this great nature, if it were unwilling to fight with it, lest it be brought to such disgrace? I said this: what was the race of darkness going to do to God, if it were unwilling to fight with it? If it is said to me "nothing," I ask, why today a part of him, that is, God of God, is placed in calamities, in pressures, in captivity, in subjection, so that it is even liberated so shamefully and cannot be entirely liberated, nor even the Father himself, so that he has mourning on account of that mentioned part, which mourning Manichaeus in his books most openly proclaims as a game. Someone says: nothing could be done to him, but in order to show that he had foreknowledge of the thoughts of the princes of darkness, and to show that he feared nothing, for that reason he fought. To which I said: he who could see the thoughts of the princes of darkness and fear no one, why did he not see the mourning impending upon him from the unhappiness of his part, which he suffers today? Which part of his he will receive whole, because something remains from it, as he himself says, which cannot be purified, and will be condemned forever in the globe of darkness. Great foreknowledge, or rather ignorance and miserable weakness, this is all that he feared no one. Certainly, if he could not protect himself in any way, he would ask.

so that it might be spared, lest that integrity and glory of all ornaments be brought to such a disgrace. Again, it was said by someone: the race of darkness could do nothing to him, but he himself did not wish to suffer an evil thing near his own borders, and he sent someone to subdue it. To this I said: if it is as you say, then he himself is found to be evil, who wished to destroy a neighboring thing that harmed him not. And just as he is evil toward that thing, so he is cruel toward his own, or ignorant of its future calamity. For when he thinks he can accomplish a good thing, so that he might extend his own region into the kingdom of evil, which did not harm him, he did not first foresee the unhappiness that daily oppresses that part of him; and then that he will never be able to recover it entirely to its former freedom. But since this objection can hardly be answered, they set forth their usual ignorance: what were the Jews going to do to Christ, if he did not wish to suffer from them? O, if only they could see—what they would easily see, were they not blinded by the clouds of contention—what it is to be pressed by the necessity of imminent evil, which they assert their god suffered; and what it is the most benevolent office of mercy, which the wisdom and power of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, by his will and ineffable power through the man whom he took from the Virgin, deigned to show to the human race, so that through a man he might demonstrate to men an example of patience. For it was necessary, and this was just.

so that men might overcome the difficulty of their own fleshly weakness through the patience of humility, because they had fallen into it through the pride of arrogance, as our scripture indicates in the first man, Adam. Can you also say: because there were some men whom God wished to teach patience, for that reason he wished to suffer such great evils from the race of darkness, just as the Lord suffered from the Jews? Or can you say: because God took up some passible nature, in which he would suffer from the race of darkness whatever it could do to him, yet he himself would in no part be changed in his own substance, just as the Word of God, who is the Son of God, also himself immutable like the Father, took up a mortal man, so that with his integrity and inviolate divinity in a mortal body he might teach mortals through patience to overcome death, and show by the resurrection the future transformation of that same weak flesh for the better?

Since He was invisible in Himself, He appeared visible in the man whom He deigned to receive from a woman, as we read in the Gospel. The Apostle also says: born of a woman. And these people say: why does it not say 'from a virgin'? Not understanding that it is customarily said according to the proper usage of scriptural language, just as it was said of Eve: He formed her into a woman, before she was even shown to her husband. Although Mary is not incongruously called a woman because of childbirth, but a virgin, because she knew no male union, nor was her virginity corrupted by giving birth. As for the angel and Elizabeth saying to Mary: blessed are you among women, there is no question, because truly the virgin is blessed among women. But do not say, "just as angels appeared, so He has a body, so that He would not be born from a woman." What if it is said to you: where did you read that Christ came in the flesh? Will you not say: in the Gospel? It is answered to you, therefore, that it is written there that Christ was born of a virgin. But with your usual foulness you will say that the scripture itself is false. Nor do you see that any blind person like you can do this, so that what you say is true, he declares false, and what you say is false, he declares true, and thus you open the doors to every human error or crime, so that each one, as he wishes or is pleased, accepts the divine scriptures themselves.

reject, however, what, not understanding and being offended, you consider evil, and if this rule is not found, your errors cannot be corrected from such sources. Accept the canonical scriptures in their entirety, if you desire to be whole. For if you understood, or at least believed, what the Apostle said—that our race was deceived through a woman—for he says: "I fear that, just as the serpent seduced Eve by its cunning, so your minds may be corrupted"—you would be able to understand that our race had to be liberated through a woman, so that, since death came through a woman, life might be recovered through a woman, and thus it might be shown that it is not the female creature herself who is to be blamed, whose creator is God, but the will with which Eve sinned. But you fear that the ineffable and unblemished majesty and power was in the virginal womb, lest it be polluted by her blood, when it both dwelt and now dwells in the apostles and in many worthy women, who certainly have bodies and have blood. For if it could be polluted in Mary, it could be in all; but if it could not be in them, certainly it could not be in Mary either, in whose womb the wisdom of God accomplished the taking on of a body.

Certainly the Manichaeans themselves will not deny that Manichaeus himself was born from a father and a mother, whose soul, according to their error, they will likewise not deny to be the omnipotent God. He boasts, with remarkable pride, that he was assumed by his twin, that is, the Holy Spirit. And certainly, if he is the twin of the Holy Spirit, then he himself is the Holy Spirit, and he himself is the omnipotent God as the Holy Spirit. Yet this Manichaeus had flesh. If in that flesh the Holy Spirit or his soul, the twin of the Holy Spirit, was polluted, then they worship a God who can be polluted. But if God is never polluted—since even the light of the heavenly bodies reaches the earth and is not polluted, and it is manifest that this sun, before which they bend the knee, spreads its rays over all filth and stench and is nowhere polluted—then let them cease to blaspheme and pray to God to be freed from error. For an unpollutable substance is not unpolluted because it touches nothing, but because it remains in its own purity, whatever it may be, whatever it touches. Just as an invulnerable or impenetrable body—do we call it that which is not struck by iron, or rather that which, even when struck, is not penetrated? And for this reason the Son of God is proved all the more not to be able to be polluted by the blood of a woman, because he was born through a woman. For if he had not been born through a woman and had avoided those members, he would seem to have indicated that he could be defiled by them, and would be less confidently called unpollutable by us.

He consecrated virginity, because he wished to be born from a virgin, and she alone was to be chosen as his mother on earth to receive the man who already had a father in the heavens. But they say: why then did he deny his mother, when he said to her: what is that to me and to you, woman? and when, upon being told that she wished to see him, he replied: who is my mother, or who are my brothers? and he rather counted among his kin in this affection those who would do the will of his father, because by his own example he was already teaching that earthly parents must be denied for the sake of God. For earthly affection ought not to clamor against one performing divine works. For if for this reason he had no mother, because he denied his mother, then neither did Peter and the other apostles have fathers, because he warned them, saying: and do not call any father to yourselves upon earth; for there is one father of yours, who is in heaven. Therefore, what he warned them about the earthly father, he himself first did concerning the mother. So we say that the wisdom of God, by taking on a man, was not defiled; but mercifully, for the salvation of men, it took on a man, so that there might be, as the apostle says, a mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. For he could not have lied to his doubting disciple, who said: I am the truth, when he offered the scars of his wounds to be touched even by hand. For how would we have secure faith in him in any matter, if he had lied thus to his own disciple?

Far be such blasphemy, and may it not hold even those who dare to assert or believe it as guilty forever; but let them at last wake up and understand with what nefarious perversity these things are believed. We, however, believe that Christ the Lord assumed a true man, and in him appeared invisibly to men in a visible manner, in him dwelt among men, in him endured human things from men, in him taught men what was to be shunned, what was to be endured, whither one was to strive. But He did all this by no necessity. Whence He Himself says: "For this my Father loves me, because I lay down my soul, that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again." Therefore He did not lose it by the necessity of evil. For He willed that all things which were done in His passion should happen for teaching human nature, not for protecting His own. For just as we, who consist of soul and body, when we are invisible according to the soul, but visible according to the body, all things which we receive visibly, whether of honor and benefits, or suffer of contumely or injury, pertain to the soul, which is invisible.

we must refer to Him as to a prince, because she herself rules the body—for even though we are immortal according to the soul, when we are dead in body, we are called dead—so also the Lord, according to the flesh and the form of a servant which He deigned to take up, is manifested to have suffered insults and bonds and scourges and to have died: so that it is believed that truth did everything truthfully and nothing falsely, because by power and will the Word became flesh and was born and suffered and died and rose again, by no necessity of His own, but by will and power, of which no part has ever been plundered, none is even now captive, not only of the divine but not even of the mortal nature itself which He took up, nor will it ever be able to be captured except by those who, through faith, have wished to be joined to Him with a pure heart, not like the god of the Manichaeans, who, pressed by the evil of necessity, today here in part—which they cannot deny—wallows in miseries and calamities.

Understand correctly, if you can, how great a difference there is even among men themselves between necessity and will. For example, if someone, on account of his own sin, is sent to prison by order of justice, and another man, a holy man, enters the same prison for the sake of that man’s consolation or liberation, are they both placed in prison for the same reason? That one was sent, this one entered; that one suffers punishment, this one performs mercy; this one entered when he wished, and left when he wished; that one, unless pardon intervenes, can by no right be set free. And men can do this and freely bestow a benefit, even when at times they desire nothing to be given to them in return. Consider, then, whether God can suffer any necessity, when men can do good deeds by will, with no reward hired, with no necessity compelled. Therefore God suffers no necessity, nor does He act by necessity in what He does, but by His supreme and ineffable will and power.

And yet you, especially according to your error, ought not to have set forth this contradiction, by which you say: what were the Jews going to do to Christ, if he were unwilling to suffer from them? because, according to the blasphemies of the same Manichaeus, Christ did not have flesh nor did he suffer anything from the Jews. For thus in the Letter of the Foundation he says: "Indeed the enemy, who hoped that he had crucified the same savior, the father of the righteous, is himself the one who was crucified, at which time one thing was done and another was shown. Thus the prince of darkness was fixed to the cross and likewise wore a crown of thorns with his associates and had a scarlet garment; he also drank vinegar and gall, which some thought the Lord had drunk. And all things which he seemed to endure here were inflicted upon the leaders of darkness, who were also wounded with nails and a lance." Why then do you set forth, saying: what were the Jews going to do to Christ, if he were unwilling to suffer from them? when you think thus about his passion: that not the god himself suffered anything in his own body, but you think the prince of darkness suffered all those things. How then do you set these things forth against our faith?

For we believe, as it is written in the Gospel, that Christ willed to suffer, and when he willed, he suffered; for the Jews did not bring about that passion whenever they wished. They indeed wished to seize him and kill him, and according to their own will they had already completed the crime they were attempting, and they were already guilty of the most monstrous sin, because they wished it, even if they had done nothing; nevertheless, he who had the power to lay down his soul, when he wished, permitted them to act, he who could have commanded the legions of angels so that the Jews would perish, or could have destroyed them all with a single word of his. Therefore the Lord Christ, according to the human nature he assumed, suffered; and no part of him is held today by the Jews, nor of the mortal body he had taken up, as we said above. For your god, O Manichaeans, was pressed by impending ruin and devastation, did not advance to battle by free will, but was compelled by necessity; nor did he wish to bestow anything, but was trying to resist. He, even in his own substance, not in an assumed mortal body, was devoured and mixed together; he is partly held today, and partly will always be held in the globe. And yet, who would endure such incredible blasphemies, which these people do not hesitate to utter concerning the passion of the Lord himself?

All the apostles, all rational tongues proclaim that the Lord Christ suffered, every sound faith confesses that Christ suffered for us, and Manichaeus asserts that demons endured all those sufferings. For he does not say they suffered for this reason, because the Lord triumphed over them and taught us to triumph over them through patience. But because they deny that the Lord Christ had mortal flesh. To whom we say: if he did not have mortal flesh, what was it that the Jews held? What was it that hung on the cross? What was fixed with nails to the wood? What was struck by the lance, from which blood and water flowed? For if these things only seemed to happen and did not happen, they would be a phantasm, which it is impious to believe. But if they truly happened, yet you say they happened not in mortal flesh, but in the divine substance itself, you say that the divine substance is changeable and visible to fleshly eyes and tangible to fleshly hands and vulnerable to iron: which again is impious to believe. And therefore, while Manichaeus fears to say that these things did not happen, and again fears to say that they happened in the divine substance, and is unwilling to confess, because he could not understand how the Son of God, through whom all things were made, without any change or defilement of his divine substance, took up a man with flesh, he is compelled to say that not Christ, but the prince of darkness with his associates endured all those things. Wretched ones!

Do you not fear that it may be said to you in judgment: I freed you. For whom did I suffer? Go. Let that one free us to whom you attribute my sufferings. You say, with great error, but still you say, that Christ is born daily, suffers daily, dies daily. Is it perhaps in those who believe and suffer tribulations and death for his name? No, they say, but in gourds and leeks and purslane and other such things. Great absurdities, great blindness: above, by the passions of demons; here, by the passions of vegetables, men are freed from sins. Likewise, when we say to them: What would the race of darkness have done to God if he had been unwilling to fight with it? They say: Nothing could have been done to the incorruptible God. For if, for example, someone wished to tear a solid glass sphere with his nails, the savagery of his nails would never do anything to it.

But if they were to imagine that the divine substance is such that all the savagery of the race of darkness is to it as claws tearing at a glass sphere are to that sphere, then the god of Manichaeus would not today suffer grief over the cutting off or loss of his own part: which part they say, when it has been in fruits or in herbs, that is, in a melon or a beet or such things, knows its own beginning, middle, and end; but when it comes to flesh, it loses all understanding; and for that reason a teacher was sent to men, because the part of god in them has become foolish, and for that reason none was sent to melons, because they have a wise soul. Who would believe that these things could ever be said by men or among men? But yet, how does the substance of your god suffer no evil, when it is bound in fruits and blinded in flesh, or when, wishing to return, it is cast down to the earth by the race of darkness? But if nothing evil has happened or happens to it, then all things are false which Manichaeus said in the Epistula Fundamenti, which is the head of all empty fables, or in the Thesaurus, which is the treasury of all shameful things and blasphemies, or in all his other books, in which with such great loquacity he affirms nothing other than the unhappiness of the substance of god, which he says is mixed with the princes of darkness, and sorrow in the divine powers because of that great anxiety to set it free.

For truly, the substance of God neither could nor will be able to suffer any evil, nor does it have any enemy who corrupts its unbegotten part; rather, men are enemies to God, or rather to themselves, by not obeying God's precepts and by corrupting themselves through their lusts, not God. But if you, O Manichaeans, were willing to direct a simple eye to the concord of the two Testaments, you would see it most easily. For you rage madly against what is written: "The spirit of God was borne over the water" and "God saw that it was good" and "Adam, where are you?" and "the jealous God" and "the devouring fire" and "my sword" and other such things, not considering that, if someone else were so blind as to wish to reproach that saying of the Lord in the Gospel: "You shall not swear by heaven, because it is the seat of God; nor by the earth, because it is the footstool of His feet," and were to say what you are accustomed to say with amazing madness: "Where was God before heaven and earth existed?" or what is written: "And Jesus marvelled," since no one usually marvels except at something unknown to him. But to see that something is good is not the mark of an ignorant person, but because what He made pleased Him. Or that which is written, with the Lord saying: "Who touched me?" and concerning Lazarus: "Where have you placed him?

And: ‘I have come not to bring peace on earth, but a sword’; and: ‘I have come to bring fire into the world’; and: ‘I have come so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind’; and: ‘Sell your possessions and buy yourselves swords’; and the Apostle: ‘I will zeal you with the zeal of God’; and: ‘The wrath of God will be revealed from heaven upon all impiety’; and countless other things said or done by the Lord Himself or by the apostles, which men, not understanding, will be able to accuse most insanely. For the greedy or the dissolute can also take in another way what the Lord said, that if someone gives up what he has, he will receive sevenfold or even a hundredfold in this world; or if someone wishes to dismiss a wife, a maidservant, or even prostitutes for the Lord’s sake, he might do so in hope of that multiplication, not out of love of justice. They can also, misunderstanding, be horrified at what He said: ‘If someone does not eat my flesh and drink my blood, he will not have life in himself.’ For as to what He said: ‘Whoever calls his brother a fool will be liable to the fire of Gehenna,’ if fools say, ‘Behold, He threatens Gehenna for an insult.’ Whom do you call merciful to forgive sins? Do they not know where their head is? And yet they seem to themselves to be saying something? Or that He handed over so many souls to demons in pigs, when you say that the souls of pigs are of the same kind as those of men? Or that He made a tree, on which there was fruit because it was not the season, barren with a word, which you say has an understanding soul?

Behold how utterly wicked and blind men can speak of divine scriptures, just as you, in those things which were done or said mystically in the Old Books, being ignorant, rush to accuse rashly what you do not understand. But when these same things from the New Testament are objected to you, you say they signify divine and spiritual things. Yet you deny that the holy scriptures of the Old Testament can be taken figuratively, even though the Lord Himself spoke some things from it figuratively, and the Apostle Paul writes that all things happened to that people in figure. For he himself, showing the rule, expounded many things from it. But perhaps you say, with your usual vanity and dull heart, speaking against the authority of the Lord or the Apostle, that the sayings of the Old Testament cannot be expounded at all, but only the New can be expounded in such matters. And you do not consider that you have nothing to say if other impious men should tell you that the Old can rather be expounded, and the New cannot. But a sound mind, considering both testaments, will declare without doubt that whatever in one is found to admit of exposition, it will also in the other. Your inexperience, or rather malice, appears greatly. Pay attention in the Acts of Leucius, which he writes under the name of the Apostles, to what sort of things are those which you accept from Maximilla, wife of Egetis.

When she was unwilling to pay the marital debt to her husband, although the Apostle said: "Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband," she placed her maidservant, named Euclia, under her husband, adorning her, as it is written there, with meretricious allurements and cosmetics, and by night substituted her as a proxy, so that he, unknowing, would lie with her as with his wife. It is also written there that when the same Maximilla and Iphidamia had gone together to hear the Apostle Andrew, a certain beautiful little boy—whom Leucius wishes to be understood as either a god or certainly an angel—commended them to the Apostle Andrew and went to the praetorium of Egetes, and, entering their bedchamber, feigned a woman's voice as if Maximilla were murmuring about the pains of the female sex and Iphidamia were responding. When Egetes heard these conversations, believing them to be there, he departed. What do you say to these things? I ask you. Why did Maximilla not fear to bind souls in the flesh through the most shameful pimping of her maidservant? Moreover, when you believe that little boy lied so shamefully, who would believe you speaking, since if you lie, you say you are imitating the Lord?

But you, full of rashness, still rush into the old books, laboring rather to accuse what you do not know than to learn. Consider what miracles are there. If you delight in the miracles of the New Testament, there the dead were first raised, there lepers were first cleansed, and many other things that become known to those who seek diligently and piously for the building up of faith. If, however, you delight in good precepts, there those two precepts were first written, which the Lord praises sublimely concerning loving God and neighbor. There, the house, parents, children, and the rest are to be left behind for the Lord’s sake; there, evil is not to be returned for evil; there, one is to pray for enemies; there, the enemy is to be forgiven; there, the cheek is to be offered to receive a slap, and whatever precepts are in the New Testament are not only commanded there but also fulfilled by holy men with all vigilance. Can your malice also say that whatever good and magnificent things are written there are false and added? But those things which you, not understanding, consider evil—are they only true? For you ought to consider that other impious men could similarly act regarding the New Testament, so that whatever is there which they, not understanding, consider evil, they might reproach and say that those alone are true there, but that all those things which are openly magnified there are false and were added by lovers of the Lord, lest everything seem to be shunned. So that both you and they, struck with such blindness, are already judged and condemned, and are to be put to flight.

Finally, wake up and cease from blasphemies, and accept the authority of all the holy canonical scriptures, if you think to be Christians, and do not accuse what you do not understand. But rather desire their understanding. For what kind of thing is even that, that you deny the resurrection of the flesh? The apostle Paul cries out: "It is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in contumely, it rises in glory; it is sown in infirmity, it rises in virtue; it is sown as an animal body, it rises as a spiritual body." And you cry out against it, that the flesh of man cannot rise again, and that it has the prince of darkness as its author, when the same apostle says that it is the members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. "Do you not know," he says, "that your bodies are members of Christ?" Which he says not according to the infirmity of present corruption, which descends from the penalty of original sin, but according to the adoption of the future resurrection, as he also says elsewhere: "And we ourselves groan within, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body." Elsewhere he also compared the same flesh to the Church, when speaking of marriage, saying: "For no one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church." Therefore, what he says in another place: "Flesh...

The flesh struggles against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; but he does not condemn the flesh, so that we might regard it as an enemy, but rather admonishes us to subdue it to ourselves, so that it may serve the spirit as a wife for conceiving and bringing forth good works—which he says cannot happen except by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. For it is not the nature of the flesh, but its penalty, that resists us, because we have merited by sin to be mortal. For again he says: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you." And yet, although the flesh itself is called hay on account of present infirmity, you believe that John made a breeze from hay, and you do not believe that almighty God can make a spiritual body from an animal body. For on account of that very transformation of the flesh, which is to come—since God will make a heavenly body from this flesh, when we shall be equal to the angels of God—the same apostle most truly says: "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God.

But it is no wonder that you are so blind that you think these things cannot be done by an omnipotent God, when you even say that the world, or all things that have been made, could not have been made otherwise by God except under great and wretched necessity, and unless there were matter that assisted Him in the work of making the world, so that He might thereby free His own part. Therefore choose now what you wish to follow: a less powerful and weak God, who, by the necessity of His part placed in misery, was helped by matter which He Himself had not made in order to make the world, or an omnipotent God, who by no necessity but by His own will and supreme power spoke, and they were made, commanded, and they were created; who calls things that are not as if they were things that are. Therefore you men, who have been deceived by this impiety of Manichaeus, flee, hasten while you may, lest you deserve eternal condemnation from that just judge; repent of your sins, if you wish to be freed, and do not listen to the Manichaeans saying: we do not sin, that is, the souls of light, but the race of darkness sins. For if it is so, why do they frighten us so that we believe them? For they cannot say that unbelief is not a sin, since it is written: he who does not believe is already judged.

If, therefore, unbelief is a sin, and the race of darkness does not sin, it follows that the part of light is found to be immune from all sin. Therefore all return to the kingdom, because they themselves do not sin, and nothing is to be feared for any soul, because it sins not at all; and false are the things that Manichaeus says, that the cut-off part of light—that is, sinful souls—is condemned to the custody of the globe, so that some security for the divine kingdoms, placed in peril, may at last be procured. It is necessary, therefore, that either the part of light sins or the part of darkness. But if the part of light sins, God sins, which it is impious to say. If, however, the part of darkness sins, it is itself called to the kingdom by him who said: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners,” because there is no need of a physician for the healthy, but for those who are ill. But that divinity from divinity and light from light, degenerating into the race of darkness, is joined to it forever.

O detestable error of mind in those who believe such things! I would, however, that you would attend and wish to see that he whom you say is naturally the highest evil cannot become evil, since if whatever he does, he does in such a way that he cannot depart from his nature and do otherwise, he assuredly sins in nothing; but if he sins in nothing, he does nothing evil, and therefore, if he has done nothing evil, he is certainly not evil. It remains, therefore, that the part of God, which is understood as God, which you call the soul, is alone guilty of all sins, and that you pour back into your God all those things which you most insanely think are to be accused. But what does truth proclaim? A body, when it is without a soul, cannot sin, but sin can be committed through it; an irrational soul indeed cannot sin, because it can neither receive the precepts of reason nor attain to blessedness, but in its own grade preserves the order of nature which it received; a rational soul, however, because it can perceive the rational precepts of right actions and by right actions attain to eternal blessedness, if it has been unwilling to do so by sinning, is justly condemned to lower things, since between it and God nothing separates except a perverse will.

Read, Manichaeans, and with all vigilance discuss these things, and read and discuss them more and more, but with a calm mind, not a hostile one. Read them, paying attention that this writing will be a witness for you in the future judgment, if, recognizing that what has been said is true, you do not hasten with all speed to the bosom of the mother Catholic Church, which alone teaches the truth. Judge at last and choose, Manichaeans, whom you wish to follow: the unbegotten Father, the only-begotten Son, the Holy Spirit common in the unity of the Father and the Son; one omnipotent God, incorruptible, immutable, eternal, good, holy, merciful, just, who has no parts because He is one, nor can any particle of His be separated from Him because He is inseparable, nor can anything of His be changed because He is wholly immutable, nor can even the slightest part of His substance be corrupted because He is wholly incorruptible; who willed, and all things were made—whatever exists, whatever lives, whatever understands—for He Himself is the highest substance, the highest life, the highest truth; who commanded, and all things were ordered in their places and times as good things; who deigned to set rational creation above all other creation; who, when it fell by its own will through pride from His laws and followed the visible, mercifully through His ministers and through Himself showed certain signs visibly, and examples, and precepts.

which he could rise up and be restored to eternal life, he deigned to speak: whom the Catholic faith proclaims. Is that the god who is falsely called incorrupt, because afterwards he is found oppressed by evil necessity; timid, because driven by imminent decay and devastation he was compelled to war; full of ignorance, if he could not see what might befall his own part; cruel, if he foresaw the future misery of his part and, though he could have rested secure with it, nevertheless sent it to a wretched battle; evil, if, though nothing could be done to him by the nature of evil, he still attempted to destroy it himself; rash, who dared to engage with that by which his part was both held captive and would be stained forever; changeable, because he has already been changed in part; corruptible, because he has already been corrupted in part; in part whoring, in part lying, in part blaspheming, committing all crimes in part, because he has been mixed with all these in part; mourning, covered with a mourning veil; subject to demons like clay to a potter, and forced by necessity into a shameful role, so that, transformed into boys and virgins, he would kindle the lust of demons: whom the Manichaean proclaims. Or certainly, if you can, deny—with your own conscience as witness to you of the true eternal God who will judge all—one of these to yourselves.

If, however, what we say is true, then finally look, finally see, in what death you are established. Be humble, if you wish to be freed, and do not proudly and impiously say that we ourselves are the omnipotent God—for this is what you say when you assert that your souls are parts of him; for God is not greater in one part and lesser in another. But rather say to yourselves: God is immutable, we are mutable; God is incorruptible, we are corrupted by our desires; God is undefilable, we are defiled by our sins; God is wisdom itself, we are foolish and strive to attain wisdom; God is eternal and blessed life itself, we are wretched through our sins and desire to become blessed: therefore we are not part of his substance. For if you are his parts and suffer such great things, it remains that he himself already in part suffers all these things and could suffer more, which has befallen his part—unless he provided for himself through your misery. See, therefore, what you are. If you are parts of him, you are God; if you are begotten by him, you are likewise God: why are you defiled by such great corruption of sins? But if you are made by him, confess this, and you will no longer be Manichaeans.

49. For Manichaeus says that there are two natures, one good and the other evil: a good nature which made the world, and an evil nature from which the world was made. But if God made us, Manichaeus does not find from what God made us. For if He made you from Himself, you are what He is. Therefore you ought not to be defiled by such great corruption of sins, as has already been said. But if He made you from something else, you do not belong to Him, because He made you in the same way as the world. But if He made you neither from Himself nor from something else, but merely by His own omnipotence He willed it, and you were made, say this to Manichaeus and renounce his error. For it befits the omnipotent to make what He wills, as the Catholic Church says: He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created. Say to yourselves: we are not parts of Him, but we are His works. Say to yourselves: if God suffered from necessity and could not escape otherwise except by suffering the loss of His own part, who will ever be able to be freed from such necessities? Or who will there be to protect God, who is not able to protect Himself? Or when will He be able to free me from this captivity of necessity, who could not keep me in whole kingdoms? For He did not release me from there while I was sinning, but He sent me into sins themselves. Or when will He be able to help me, miserably placed among alien things, who, in order to help Himself, gave me over to such great ruin, so that He might not fight?

If God himself is incorruptible, what was that evil nature going to do to him if he was unwilling to fight with it, so that I am not now tormented in this way? Or what kind of injustice is this, that I should be condemned to the globe, while he, so that he may be a little secure for a time, I here endure such great sufferings? Certainly, since I am the same as he is, since I am a part of him, with no one in his realms established in need or in a lowly position, do we by turns suffer this misery, so that I may rest a little and those realms may be able to be peaceful without danger? Although it is to be feared that this nature of evil cannot be kept confined even in the globe itself. For if it corrupted incorruptible realms and violated the inviolate substance of God, how can that part of the light, that is, the sinful souls, which, corrupted, are fixed weak and feeble to the confining globe, how can they not be absorbed by it, so that it then throws all those divine realms into confusion, with no one able to resist? For who would then dare to go to war, when with that part which had gone forth it was so unjustly dealt, that its rest condemned its own citizens to the eternal custody of the globe? Or if it cannot break through the globe to reach that bright covering of the condemned souls, what need is there to cover it with the condemnation of divine members? But if it can break through the globe, who will resist it, wounded as it is, when it wounded the intact? Away with such a grievous and so abominable blasphemy.

Do not allow that iniquity to enter your ears; do not entangle yourselves in such a deadly business. Flee from Manichaeus and hasten with all your desire to the breasts of Catholic truth.