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Augustine of Hippo, On the Morals of the Manichæans
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On the Morals of the Manichæans.
On the Morals of the Manichæans.
Chapter 1.—The Supreme Good is that Which is Possessed of Supreme Existence.
Chapter 4.—The Difference Between What is Good in Itself and What is Good by Participation.
Chapter 5.—If Evil is Defined to Be Corruption, This Completely Refutes the Manichæan Heresy.
Chapter 6.—What Corruption Affects and What It is.
Chapter 8.—Evil is Not a Substance, But a Disagreement Hostile to Substance.
Chapter 9.—The Manichæan Fictions About Things Good and Evil are Not Consistent with Themselves.
Chapter 10.—Three Moral Symbols Devised by the Manichæans for No Good.
Chapter 12.—Manichæan Subterfuge.
Chapter 14.—Three Good Reasons for Abstaining from Certain Kinds of Food.
Chapter 15.—Why the Manichæans Prohibit the Use of Flesh.
Chapter 16.—Disclosure of the Monstrous Tenets of the Manichæans.
Chapter 17.—Description of the Symbol of the Hands Among the Manichæans.
Chapter 18.—Of the Symbol of the Breast, and of the Shameful Mysteries of the Manichæans.
Chapter 5.—If Evil is Defined to Be Corruption, This Completely Refutes the Manichæan Heresy.
7. I ask a third time, What is evil? Perhaps you will reply, Corruption. Undeniably this is a general definition of evil; for corruption implies opposition to nature, and also hurt. But corruption exists not by itself, but in some substance which it corrupts; for corruption itself is not a substance. So the thing which it corrupts is not corruption, is not evil; for what is corrupted suffers the loss of integrity and purity. So that which has no purity to lose cannot be corrupted; and what has, is necessarily good by the participation of purity. Again, what is corrupted is perverted; and what is perverted suffers the loss of order, and order is good. To be corrupted, then, does not imply the absence of good; for in corruption it can be deprived of good, which could not be if there was the absence of good. Therefore that race of darkness, if it was destitute of all good, as you say it was, could not be corrupted, for it had nothing which corruption could take from it; and if corruption takes nothing away, it does not corrupt. Say now, if you dare, that God and the kingdom of God can be corrupted, when you cannot show how the kingdom of the devil, such as you make it, can be corrupted.