Chapter 38 [XXIII.]—Jovinian Used Formerly to Call Catholics Manicheans; The Arians Also Used to Call Catholics Sabellians.

“By your new mode of controversy,” says he, “you both profess to be a catholic and patronize Manichæus, inasmuch as you designate matrimony both as a great good and a great evil.” Now he is utterly ignorant of what he says, or pretends to be ignorant. Or else he does not understand what we say, or does not wish it to be understood. But if he does not understand, he is impeded by the pre-occupation of error; or if he does not wish our meaning to be understood, then obstinacy is the fault with which he defends his error. Jovinian, too, who endeavoured a few years ago to found a new heresy, used to declare that the catholics patronized the Manicheans, because in opposition to him they preferred holy virginity to marriage. But this man is sure to reply, that he does not agree with Jovinian in his indifference about marriage and virginity. I do not myself say that this is their opinion; still these new heretics must allow, by the fact of Jovinian’s playing off the Manicheans upon the catholics, that the expedient is not a novel one. We then declare that marriage is a good, not an evil. But just as the Arians charge us with being Sabellians, although we do not say that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one and the same, as the Sabellians hold; but affirm that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost have one and the same nature, as the catholics believe: so do the Pelagians cast the Manicheans in our teeth, although we do not declare marriage to be an evil, as the Manicheans pretend, but affirm that evil accrued to the first man and woman, that is to say, to the first married pair, and from them passed on to all men, as the catholics hold. As, however, the Arians, while avoiding the Sabellians, fall into worse company, because they have had the audacity to divide not the Persons of the Trinity, but the natures; so the Pelagians, in their efforts to escape from the pestilent error of the Manicheans, by taking the opposite extreme, are convicted of entertaining worse sentiments than the Manicheans themselves touching the fruit of matrimony, inasmuch as they believe that infants stand in no need of Christ as their Physician.

CAPUT XXIII.

38. «Novo,» inquit, «genere disserendi, et catholicum profiteris , et Manichaeo patrocinaris, dicendo nuptias et magnum bonum, et magnum malum.» Prorsus quid loquatur, ignorat, sive ignorare se simulat. Aut enim non intelligit, aut non vult intelligi quid dicamus. Sed si non intelligit, praeoccupatione impeditur erroris: si autem non vult quid dicamus intelligi, pervicaciae vitium est, quo suum defendit errorem. Et Jovinianus, qui paucos ante annos novellam conatus est haeresim condere, Manichaeis patrocinari dicebat Catholicos, quod adversus eum sanctam virginitatem nuptiis praeferebant. Sed responsurus est iste, non se quod Jovinianus de indifferentia nuptiarum virginumque sentire. Nec ego dico quod isti hoc sentiant: verumtamen per Jovinianum Catholicis Manichaeos objicientem, non esse hoc novum, novi haeretici recognoscant. Nos itaque nuptias bonum dicimus esse, non malum. Sed sicuti Ariani Sabellianos nos esse criminantur, quamvis non dicamus unum eumdemque esse Patrem et Filium et Spiritum sanctum, quod Sabelliani dicunt; sed dicamus unam eamdemque esse naturam Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, quod Catholici dicunt: ita Pelagiani nobis Manichaeos objiciunt, quamvis non dicamus esse malum nuptias, quod dicunt Manichaei; sed dicamus malum primis hominibus, id est, primis conjugibus accidisse , et inde in omnes homines pertransisse, quod dicunt Catholici. Sed sicut Ariani dum Sabellianos fugiunt, in pejus aliquid inciderunt; quia Trinitatis ausi sunt non personas discernere, sed naturas: ita Pelagiani dum Manichaeorum pestem in perversum vitare conantur, de nuptiarum fructu ipsis Manichaeis convincuntur perniciosiora sentire, credendo parvulos Christo medico non egere.