Concerning the Nature of Good, Against the…

 St. AUGUSTIN:

 Concerning the Nature of Good,

 Chapter 1.—God the Highest and Unchangeable Good, from Whom are All Other Good Things, Spiritual and Corporeal.

 Chapter 2.—How This May Suffice for Correcting the Manichæans.

 Chapter 3.—Measure, Form, and Order, Generic Goods in Things Made by God.

 Chapter 4.—Evil is Corruption of Measure, Form, or Order.

 Chapter 5.—The Corrupted Nature of a More Excellent Order Sometimes Better Than an Inferior Nature Even Uncorrupted.

 Chapter 6.—Nature Which Cannot Be Corrupted is the Highest Good That Which Can, is Some Good.

 Chapter 7.—The Corruption of Rational Spirits is on the One Hand Voluntary, on the Other Penal.

 Chapter 8.—From the Corruption and Destruction of Inferior Things is the Beauty of the Universe.

 Chapter 9.—Punishment is Constituted for the Sinning Nature that It May Be Rightly Ordered.

 Chapter 10.—Natures Corruptible, Because Made of Nothing.

 Chapter 11.—God Cannot Suffer Harm, Nor Can Any Other Nature Except by His Permission.

 Chapter 12.—All Good Things are from God Alone.

 Chapter 13.—Individual Good Things, Whether Small or Great, are from God.

 Chapter 14.—Small Good Things in Comparison with Greater are Called by Contrary Names.

 Chapter 15.—In the Body of the Ape the Good of Beauty is Present, Though in a Less Degree.

 Chapter 16.—Privations in Things are Fittingly Ordered by God.

 Chapter 17.—Nature, in as Far as It is Nature, No Evil.

 Chapter 18.—Hyle, Which Was Called by the Ancients the Formless Material of Things, is Not an Evil.

 Chapter 19.—To Have True Existence is an Exclusive Prerogative of God.

 Chapter 20.—Pain Only in Good Natures.

 Therefore now by common usage things small and mean are said to have measure, because some measure remains in them, without which they would no longer

 Chapter 22.—Measure in Some Sense is Suitable to God Himself.

 Chapter 23.—Whence a Bad Measure, a Bad Form, a Bad Order May Sometimes Be Spoken of.

 Chapter 24.—It is Proved by the Testimonies of Scripture that God is Unchangeable. The Son of God Begotten, Not Made.

 Chapter 25.—This Last Expression Misunderstood by Some.

 Chapter 26.—That Creatures are Made of Nothing.

 Chapter 27.—From Him And Of Him Do Not Mean The Same Thing.

 Chapter 28.—Sin Not From God, But From The Will of Those Sinning.

 Chapter 29.—That God is Not Defiled by Our Sins.

 Chapter 30.—That Good Things, Even the Least, and Those that are Earthly, are by God.

 Chapter 31.—To Punish and to Forgive Sins Belong Equally to God.

 Chapter 32.—From God Also is the Very Power to Be Hurtful.

 Chapter 33.—That Evil Angels Have Been Made Evil, Not by God, But by Sinning.

 Chapter 34.—That Sin is Not the Striving for an Evil Nature, But the Desertion of a Better.

 Chapter 35.—The Tree Was Forbidden to Adam Not Because It Was Evil, But Because It Was Good for Man to Be Subject to God.

 Chapter 36.—No Creature of God is Evil, But to Abuse a Creature of God is Evil.

 Chapter 37.—God Makes Good Use of the Evil Deeds of Sinners.

 Chapter 38.—Eternal Fire Torturing the Wicked, Not Evil.

 Chapter 39.—Fire is Called Eternal, Not as God Is, But Because Without End.

 Chapter 40.—Neither Can God Suffer Hurt, Nor Any Other, Save by the Just Ordination of God.

 Chapter 41.—How Great Good Things the Manichæans Put in the Nature of Evil, and How Great Evil Things in the Nature of Good.

 Chapter 42.—Manichæan Blasphemies Concerning the Nature of God.

 Chapter 43.—Many Evils Before His Commingling with Evil are Attributed to the Nature of God by the Manichæans.

 Chapter 44.—Incredible Turpitudes in God Imagined by Manichæus.

 Chapter 45.—Certain Unspeakable Turpitudes Believed, Not Without Reason, Concerning the Manichæans Themselves.

 Chapter 46.—The Unspeakable Doctrine of the Fundamental Epistle.

 Chapter 47.—He Compels to the Perpetration of Horrible Turpitudes.

 Chapter 48.—Augustin Prays that the Manichæans May Be Restored to Their Senses.

Chapter 45.—Certain Unspeakable Turpitudes Believed, Not Without Reason, Concerning the Manichæans Themselves.

But they say, that through their own Elect that same commingled part and nature of God is purged, by eating and drinking forsooth, (because they say that it is held fettered in all foods); that when they are taken up by the Elect for the nourishment of the body in eating and drinking, it is loosed, sealed, and liberated through their sanctity. Nor do the wretches pay heed to the fact that this is believed about them not without good reason, and they deny it in vain, so long as they do not anathematize the books of Manichæus and cease to be Manichæans. For if, as they say, a part of God is fettered in all seeds, and is purged by eating on the part of the Elect; who may not properly believe, that they do what they read in the Thesaurus was done among the powers of heaven and the princes of darkness; since indeed they say that their flesh is also from the race of darkness, and since they do not hesitate to believe and to affirm that the vital substance fettered in them is a part of God? Which assuredly if it is to be loosed, and purged by eating, as their lamentable error compels them to acknowledge; who does not see, who does not shudder at the greatness and the unspeakableness of what follows?