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

44. In this way, though corruption is an evil, and though it comes not from the Author of natures, but from their being made out of nothing, still, in God’s government and control over all that He has made, even corruption is so ordered that it hurts only the lowest natures, for the punishment of the condemned, and for the trial and instruction of the returning, that they may keep near to the incorruptible God, and remain incorrupt, which is our only good; as is said by the prophet, "But it is good for me that I keep near to God."26 Ps. lxxiii. 28. And you must not say, God did not make corruptible natures: for, as far as they are natures, God made them; but as far as they are corruptible, God did not make them: for corruption cannot come from Him who alone is incorruptible. If you can receive this, give thanks to God; if you cannot, be quiet and do not condemn what you do not yet understand, but humbly wait on Him who is the light of the mind that thou mayest know. For in the expression "corruptible nature" there are two words, and not one only. So, in the expression, God made out of nothing, "God" and "nothing" are two separate words. Render therefore to each of these words that which belongs to each, so that the word "nature" may go with the word "God,"and the word "corruptible" with the word "nothing." And yet even the corruptions, though they have not their origin from God, are to be overruled by Him in accordance with the order of inanimate things and the deserts of His intelligent creatures. Thus we say rightly that reward and punishment are both from God. For God’s not making corruption is consistent with His giving over to corruption the man who deserves to be corrupted, that is, who has begun to corrupt himself by sinning, that he who has wilfully yielded to the allurements of corruption may, against his will, suffer its pains.