Against the Epistle of Manichæus, Called…

 St. AUGUSTIN:

 Chapter 1.—To Heal Heretics is Better Than to Destroy Them.

 Chapter 2.—Why the Manichæans Should Be More Gently Dealt with.

 Chapter 3.—Augustin Once a Manichæan.

 Chapter 4.—Proofs of the Catholic Faith.

 Chapter 5.—Against the Title of the Epistle of Manichæus.

 Chapter 6.—Why Manichæus Called Himself an Apostle of Christ.

 Chapter 7.—In What Sense the Followers of Manichæus Believe Him to Be the Holy Spirit.

 Chapter 8.—The Festival of the Birth-Day of Manichæus.

 Chapter 9.—When the Holy Spirit Was Sent.

 Chapter 10.—The Holy Spirit Twice Given.

 Chapter 11.—Manichæus Promises Truth, But Does Not Make Good His Word.

 Chapter 12.—The Wild Fancies of Manichæus. The Battle Before the Constitution of the World.

 Chapter 13.—Two Opposite Substances. The Kingdom of Light. Manichæus Teaches Uncertainties Instead of Certainties.

 Chapter 14.—Manichæus Promises the Knowledge of Undoubted Things, and Then Demands Faith in Doubtful Things.

 Chapter 15.—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

 Chapter 16.—The Soul, Though Mutable, Has No Material Form. It is All Present in Every Part of the Body.

 Chapter 17.—The Memory Contains the Ideas of Places of the Greatest Size.

 Chapter 18.—The Understanding Judges of the Truth of Things, and of Its Own Action.

 Chapter 19.—If the Mind Has No Material Extension, Much Less Has God.

 Chapter 20.—Refutation of the Absurd Idea of Two Territories.

 Chapter 21.—This Region of Light Must Be Material If It is Joined to the Region of Darkness. The Shape of the Region of Darkness Joined to the Region

 Chapter 22.—The Form of the Region of Light the Worse of the Two.

 Chapter 23.—The Anthropomorphites Not So Bad as the Manichæans.

 Chapter 24.—Of the Number of Natures in the Manichæan Fiction.

 Chapter 25.—Omnipotence Creates Good Things Differing in Degree. In Every Description Whatsoever of the Junction of the Two Regions There is Either Im

 Chapter 26.—The Manichæans are Reduced to the Choice of a Tortuous, or Curved, or Straight Line of Junction. The Third Kind of Line Would Give Symmetr

 Chapter 27.—The Beauty of the Straight Line Might Be Taken from the Region of Darkness Without Taking Anything from Its Substance. So Evil Neither Tak

 Chapter 28.—Manichæus Places Five Natures in the Region of Darkness.

 Chapter 29.—The Refutation of This Absurdity.

 Chapter 30.—The Number of Good Things in Those Natures Which Manichæus Places in the Region of Darkness.

 Chapter 31.—The Same Subject Continued.

 Chapter 32.—Manichæus Got the Arrangement of His Fanciful Notions from Visible Objects.

 Chapter 33.—Every Nature, as Nature, is Good.

 Chapter 34.—Nature Cannot Be Without Some Good. The Manichæans Dwell Upon the Evils.

 Chapter 35.—Evil Alone is Corruption. Corruption is Not Nature, But Contrary to Nature. Corruption Implies Previous Good.

 Chapter 36.—The Source of Evil or of Corruption of Good.

 Chapter 37.—God Alone Perfectly Good.

 Chapter 38.—Nature Made by God Corruption Comes from Nothing.

 Chapter 39.—In What Sense Evils are from God.

 Chapter 40.—Corruption Tends to Non-Existence.

 Chapter 41.—Corruption is by God’s Permission, and Comes from Us.

 Chapter 42.—Exhortation to the Chief Good.

 Chapter 43.—Conclusion.

Chapter 8.—The Festival of the Birth-Day of Manichæus.

9. In adding the words, "by the providence of God the Father," what else did Manichæus design but that, having got the name of Jesus Christ, whose apostle he calls himself, and of God the Father, by whose providence he says he was sent by the Son, we should believe himself, as the Holy Spirit, to be the third person? His words are: "Manichæus, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father." The Holy Spirit is not named, though He ought specially to have been named by one who quotes to us in favor of his apostleship the promise of the Paraclete, that he may prevail upon ignorant people by the authority of the gospel. In reply to this, you of course say that in the name of the Apostle Manichæus we have the name of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, because He condescended to come into Manichæus. Why then, I ask again, should you cry out against the doctrine of the Catholic Church, that He in whom divine Wisdom came was born of a virgin, when you do not scruple to affirm the birth by ordinary generation of him in whom you say the Holy Spirit came? I cannot but suspect that this Manichæus, who uses the name of Christ to gain access to the minds of the ignorant, wished to be worshipped instead of Christ Himself. I will state briefly the reason of this conjecture. At the time when I was a student of your doctrines, to my frequent inquiries why it was that the Paschal feast of the Lord was celebrated generally with no interest, though sometimes there were a few languid worshippers, but no watchings, no prescription of any unusual fast,—in a word, no special ceremony,—while great honor is paid to your Bema, that is, the day on which Manichæus was killed, when you have a platform with fine steps, covered with precious cloth, placed conspicuously so as to face the votaries,—the reply was, that the day to observe was the day of the passion of him who really suffered, and that Christ, who was not born, but appeared to human eyes in an unreal semblance of flesh, only feigned suffering, without really bearing it. Is it not deplorable, that men who wish to be called Christians are afraid of a virgin’s womb as likely to defile the truth, and yet are not afraid of falsehood? But to go back to the point, who that pays attention can help suspecting that the intention of Manichæus in denying Christ’s being born of a woman, and having a human body, was that His passion, the time of which is now a great festival all over the world, might not be observed by the believers in himself, so as to lessen the devotion of the solemn commemoration which he wished in honor of the day of his own death? For to us it was a great attraction in the feast of the Bema that it was held during Pascha, since we used all the more earnestly to desire that festal day [the Bema], that the other which was formerly most sweet had been withdrawn.