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 46.—The Unspeakable Doctrine of the Fundamental Epistle.

For they even say that Adam, the first man, was created by certain princes of darkness so that the light might be held by them lest it should escape. For in the epistle which they call Fundamental, Manichæus wrote as follows respecting the way in which the Prince of Darkness, whom they represent as the father of the first man, spoke to the rest of his allied princes of darkness, and how he acted: "Therefore with wicked inventions he said to those present: What does this huge light that is rising seem to you to be? See how the pole moves, how it shakes most of the powers. Wherefore it is right for me rather to ask you beforehand for whatever light you have in your powers: since thus I will form an image of that great one who has appeared in his glory, through which we may be able to rule, freed in some measure from the conversation of darkness. Hearing these things, and deliberating for a long time among themselves, they thought it most just to furnish what was demanded of them. For they did not have confidence in being able to retain the light that they had forever; hence they thought it better to offer it to their Prince, by no means without hope that in this way they would rule. It must be considered therefore how they furnished the light that they had. For this also is scattered throughout all the divine scriptures and the heavenly secrets; but to the wise it is easy enough to know how it was given: for it is known immediately and openly by him who should truly and faithfully wish to consider. Since there was a promiscuous throng of those who had come together, females and males of course, he impelled them to copulate among themselves: in which copulation the males emitted seed, the females were made pregnant. But the offspring were like those who had begotten them, the first obtaining as it were the largest portion of the parents’ strength. Taking these as a special gift their Prince rejoiced. And just as even now we see take place, that the nature of evil taking thence strength forms the fashioner of bodies, so also the aforesaid Prince, taking the offspring of his companions, which had the senses of their parents, sagacity, light, procreated at the same time with themselves in the process of generation, devoured them; and very many powers having been taken from food of this kind, in which there was present not only fortitude, but much more astuteness and depraved sensibilities from the ferocious race of the progenitors, he called his own spouse to himself, springing from the same stock as himself, emitted, like the rest the abundance of evils that he had devoured, himself also adding something from his own thought and power, so that his disposition became the former and arranger of all the things that he had poured forth; whose consort received these things as soil cultivated in the best way is accustomed to receive seed. For in her were constructed and woven together the images of all heavenly and earthly powers, so that what was formed obtained the likeness, so to speak, of a full orb."