1. 1. I have prayed and still pray to the one true God almighty, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things, that, in refuting and disproving your heresy, Manicheans, to which you have perhaps clung more out of imprudence than out of malice, he may grant me a peaceful and tranquil mind, intent on your correction rather than on your overthrow. For although the Lord overturns the kingdoms of error through his servants, he nonetheless commands that the human beings themselves, insofar as they are human beings, be amended rather than destroyed. And whatever is divinely punished before that final judgment, whether through the wicked or through the just, whether through those who are ignorant or through those who know, whether secretly or openly, must be believed to serve not for the ruin of human beings but for their healing; and those who reject this remedy are being readied for the final punishment.

And so, since in this universe of things some things have the power to inflict bodily punishment, such as fire and poison and disease and the like; while others are such that a man is punished within himself, not by torments of his body, but by the snares of his own desires, such as loss, exile, bereavement, insult, and things like these; while still others are not torments but, as it were, soothing remedies for the weak, such as consolations, exhortations, and discussions, and whatever is of that kind: of all these the supreme justice of God works some even through the wicked who know not, and some through the good who know. It was therefore for us to choose and prefer the better course, so that we might find an approach to your correction not in strife and rivalry and persecutions, but by consoling you gently, by exhorting you kindly, by arguing with you mildly, as it is written: The servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be kind to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting his opponents with gentleness (2 Tim 2:24–25). It was therefore for us to choose to seek out this role; it is for God to grant what is good to those who will it and ask for it.

2. 2. Let those rage against you who do not know with what labor the truth is found and how hard it is to guard against errors. Let those rage against you who do not know how rare and arduous it is to overcome the phantasms of the flesh by the serenity of a devout mind. Let those rage against you who do not know with what difficulty the eye of the inner man is healed so that it can gaze upon its sun—not that sun which you worship, gleaming and shining with its heavenly body before the bodily eyes of both human beings and beasts, but the one of which it is written through the prophet: The sun of righteousness has risen for me (Mal 4:2); and of which it is said in the Gospel: He was the true light that enlightens everyone coming into this world (John 1:9). Let those rage against you who do not know with what sighs and groanings it comes about that God can be understood even in some small part. Finally, let those rage against you who have never been deceived by such an error as the one by which they see that you have been deceived.

3. 3. But I, who was long and greatly tossed about and at last was able to behold what that purity is which is grasped without the telling of any empty fable; I who, wretched as I was, scarcely deserved—with the Lord's help—to refute the empty imaginings of my mind, gathered together from various opinions and errors; I who, to wipe away the fog of my mind, so slowly submitted to the most merciful physician who was calling and coaxing me; I who long wept that the unchangeable and unstainable substance might, with the divine books in agreement, deign inwardly to convince me of itself;

I who, finally, both sought out curiously, and listened to attentively, and rashly believed, and insistently urged upon all I could, and obstinately and spiritedly defended against others all those fictions that hold you bound and entangled by long habit—I cannot rage against you at all, but must now bear with you as I once bore with myself, and deal with you with as much patience as those close to me dealt with me when I was raving and blind, straying in your teaching.

3. 4. But that you may grow gentle more easily, and may not set yourselves against me with a hostile spirit that is ruinous to you, I must, before any judge you please, obtain this from you: that on both sides all arrogance be set aside. Let none of us say that he has already found the truth; let us seek it as if it were unknown to us both. For it will be possible to seek it diligently and in concord only if it is not believed, by some rash presumption, to have already been found and known. But if I cannot obtain this from you, grant me at least this: that I now hear you for the first time, as men unknown to me, and now for the first time examine you. I think what I ask is just; provided indeed this rule be kept, that I will not pray with you, nor hold meetings with you, nor accept the name of Manichean, unless you give me, on all matters pertaining to the soul's salvation, a clear account without any fog.

4. 5. For in the catholic Church—to say nothing of that purest wisdom, to the knowledge of which few spiritual men attain in this life, so that they know it, in however small a part, since they are but human beings, yet without any doubt; for it is not the keenness of understanding but the simplicity of believing that makes the rest of the multitude most safe—

to pass over, then, this wisdom, which you do not believe to be in the catholic Church: there are many other things that most justly hold me in her bosom. The agreement of peoples and nations holds me; an authority holds me that was begun by miracles, nourished by hope, increased by love, and made firm by age; there holds me the succession of priests from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord after his resurrection entrusted the feeding of his sheep, down to the present episcopate; and finally there holds me the very name of Catholic, which, not without reason, this Church alone has obtained among so many heresies, so that, although all heretics wish to be called catholic, yet to a stranger who asks where the Catholic church meets, no heretic would dare to point out his own basilica or house.

These bonds, then, so many and so great, of the Christian name, most dear to it, rightly hold a man who believes in the catholic Church, even if, on account of the slowness of our understanding or the merit of our life, the truth does not yet show itself most openly. But among you, where there is none of these things to invite and hold me, only the promise of truth rings out; and if indeed that truth is shown so manifestly that it cannot come into doubt, it is to be preferred to all those things by which I am held in the catholic Church; but if it is only promised and not exhibited, no one will move me from that faith which binds my mind by so many and such great ties to the Christian religion.

5. 6. Let us see, then, what Mani teaches me, and let us especially consider that book which you call the Letter of the Foundation, in which nearly the whole of what you believe is contained. For when it was read to us, wretched as we then were, we were said by you to be enlightened. It certainly begins thus: Mani, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the providence of God the Father. These are wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain. Now with good patience, if you please, attend to what I ask. I do not believe that this man is an apostle of Christ. I beg you not to be angry and start to curse. For you know that I have determined to believe nothing rashly that is put forward by you. I ask, then, who is this Mani? You will answer: An apostle of Christ. I do not believe it; you will have nothing further to say or do; for you promised the knowledge of the truth, and now you are forcing me to believe what I do not know.

Perhaps you are about to read me the Gospel, and from it you will try to establish the person of Mani. Now if you found someone who did not yet believe the Gospel, what would you do if he said to you: I do not believe? For my part, I would not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the catholic Church moved me to it. Those, then, whom I obeyed when they said, Believe the Gospel, why should I not obey them when they say to me, Do not believe the Manicheans? Choose what you will. If you say, Believe the catholics, they themselves warn me to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I cannot but disbelieve you. If you say, Do not believe the catholics, you will not act rightly in using the Gospel to force me to the faith of Mani, for it was on the preaching of the catholics that I believed the Gospel itself.

But if you say: You rightly believed the catholics when they praised the Gospel, but you did not rightly believe them when they disparaged Mani—do you think me so foolish that, with no account given, I should believe what you wish and disbelieve what you do not wish? I act much more justly and cautiously if, since I have once believed the catholics, I do not cross over to you unless you bid me not to believe by some empty assertion, but make me know something most manifestly and most plainly. So then, if you are going to give me an account, set the Gospel aside.

But if you hold to the Gospel, I will hold to those at whose bidding I believed the Gospel; and at their command I will not believe you at all. But if perhaps you can find in the Gospel something most manifest about the apostleship of Mani, you will weaken for me the authority of the catholics, who bid me not to believe you; and once that is weakened, I will no longer be able to believe even the Gospel, since it was through them that I had believed it; and so whatever you bring forward from it will have no weight with me.

Therefore, if nothing manifest about the apostleship of Mani is found in the Gospel, I will believe the catholics rather than you. But if you read me something manifest from it in favor of Mani, I will believe neither them nor you: not them, because they lied to me about you; and not you, because you offer me a scripture which I had believed on the word of those who lied to me.

But far be it from me not to believe the Gospel; for believing it, I find no way in which I can also believe you. For the names of the apostles that are read there (See Matt 10:2ff.; Mark 3:16ff.; Luke 6:13ff) do not include among them the name of Mani. And who succeeded into the place of the betrayer of Christ, we read in the Acts of the Apostles (See Acts 1:26)—a book which I must necessarily believe if I believe the Gospel, since the catholic authority commends both Scriptures to me alike. In the same book also we hold the most widely known account of the calling and apostleship of Paul (See Acts 9). Read me now, if you can, in the Gospel where Mani was called an apostle; or in any other book which I confess I have already believed. Or are you about to read me that place where the Lord promised the apostles the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete? Concerning that passage, see how many and how great are the things that call me back and deter me from believing Mani.

6. 7. For I ask why the beginning of this letter is, Mani, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and not, The Paraclete, an apostle of Jesus Christ. But if the Paraclete, sent by Christ, sent Mani, why do I read, Mani, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and not rather, Mani, an apostle of the Paraclete? If you say that he is himself Christ, who is also the Holy Spirit, you contradict Scripture itself, where the Lord says: And I will send you another Paraclete (John 14:16).

But if you think the name of Christ is rightly placed here, not because he who is also the Paraclete is himself Christ, but because both are of the same substance—that is, not because they are one person, but because they are one thing—then Paul too could have said: Paul, an apostle of God the Father, since the Lord said: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). Nowhere does he say this; nor does any of the apostles write himself an apostle of the Father. What, then, does this novelty mean? Does it not seem to you to give off some smell of deceit?

Surely, if he judged it made no difference, why does he not call himself in some letters an apostle of Christ, in others an apostle of the Paraclete? But I have always heard "of Christ," as often as I have heard it; "of the Paraclete," not even once. What cause for this are we to suppose, except that pride, the mother of all heretics, drove the man to wish to be seen not as one sent by the Paraclete, but as one so taken up that he himself might be called the Paraclete?

Just as Jesus Christ the man was not sent by the Son of God—that is, by the Power and Wisdom of God through whom all things were made—but was so taken up, according to the catholic faith, that he himself was the Son of God, that is, so that in him the Wisdom of God might appear for the healing of sinners: so that man wished to be seen as taken up by the Holy Spirit, whom Christ promised, in such a way that, when we now hear of Mani the Holy Spirit, we should understand an apostle of Jesus Christ, that is, one sent by Jesus Christ, who promised that he would send him. This is singular audacity and unspeakable sacrilege!

7. 8. But still I ask: since the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are joined—as you too confess—in no unequal nature, why do you not think it shameful to preach that Mani, a man taken up by the Holy Spirit, was born of both sexes, while you dread to believe that a man taken up by the only-begotten Wisdom of God was born of a virgin? If human flesh, if the intercourse of a man, if the womb of a woman could not defile the Holy Spirit, how could the womb of a virgin defile the Wisdom of God? This Mani, then, who glories in the Holy Spirit and in the reading of the Gospel, must necessarily grant you that he was either sent by the Holy Spirit or taken up by him. If he was sent, let him call himself an apostle of the Paraclete; if he was taken up, let him grant a human mother to the one whom the only-begotten Son took up, if he grants a father also to the one whom the Holy Spirit took up. Let him believe that the Word of God was not defiled by the virginity of Mary, if he exhorts us to believe that the Holy Spirit could not be defiled by the intercourse of his parents.

But if you say that Mani was taken up by the Holy Spirit not in the womb or before the womb, but after he was already born, it is enough that you confess that he had flesh begotten of a man and a woman. For since you do not fear the inward parts and blood of Mani coming from human intercourse, and the entrails full of dung that this flesh carried, and do not believe that the Holy Spirit, by whom you believe that man to have been taken up, was contaminated by all these things: why should I dread a virgin's womb and untouched genitals, and not rather believe that the Wisdom of God, having taken up a man in those very maternal inward parts, remained spotless and pure? Therefore, since your Mani affirms that he was either sent or taken up by the Paraclete, and can establish neither of these: I, now more cautious, believe him to have been neither sent nor taken up.

8. 9. For as to what he added, saying, by the providence of God the Father: what else did he aim at, by naming Jesus Christ, whose apostle he says he is, and God the Father, by whose providence he says he was sent by the Son, except that we should believe the Holy Spirit himself to be the third? For thus he writes: Mani, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the providence of God the Father. The Holy Spirit is not named, who ought above all to have been named by one who commends his apostleship to us by the promise of the Paraclete, so as to press the unlearned with the authority of the Gospel.

And when this is asked of you, you answer, of course, that when Mani the apostle is named, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is named, because he deigned to come in him. I ask, then, as I said above, why you shudder when the catholic Church says that he in whom the divine Wisdom came was born of a virgin, while you shudder not at all when you proclaim that he in whom you say the Holy Spirit came was born of a woman united with a man. What else, then, I am to suspect I do not know, except that this Mani, who through the name of Christ seeks an approach to the minds of the unlearned, wished to be worshiped in Christ's own stead. From what I conjecture this, I will say briefly.

When I often asked you, in the time when I was a hearer of yours, what was the reason that the Lord's Pasch was for the most part observed by no celebration at all, and now and then by very few with a most lukewarm one, with no vigils, no longer fast appointed for the Hearers, and finally no more festive preparation; whereas you honor your Bema, that is, the day on which Mani was killed, with great honors, with a platform set up on five steps and adorned with precious cloths, displayed in full view and set before those who adore it—when I asked this, then, the answer was that the day of his passion ought to be celebrated who truly suffered, but that Christ, who had not been born and had shown to human eyes not real but simulated flesh, had not endured but feigned a passion. Who would not groan that men who wish to be called Christians fear lest the truth be polluted by a virgin's womb, and do not fear to be polluted by a lie?

But to return to the matter, who would not suspect, when he attends carefully, that Mani denied that Christ was born of a woman and had a human body for this very reason: lest his passion, which is now the most festive season of the whole world, should be celebrated by those who had come to believe in him, and lest the longed-for solemnity should honor with such devotion the day of his own death? For this was what we found most welcome in that celebration of the Bema: that it was observed in place of the Pasch; since we more vehemently longed for that feast day once the other, which used to be the sweetest, had been taken away.

9. 10. Perhaps you will say to me: When, then, did the Paraclete promised by the Lord come? Here, if I had nothing else to believe, I would more easily wait for him as still to come than grant that he had come through Mani. But as it is, since the coming of the Holy Spirit is most manifestly proclaimed in the Acts of the Apostles, what necessity forces me to believe heretics so dangerously and so easily?

For in the book just mentioned it is written thus: In the first book, O Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach on the day when he chose the apostles through the Holy Spirit and commanded them to preach the Gospel. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs over many days, appearing to them through forty days and teaching about the kingdom of God; and how he stayed with them and charged them not to depart from Jerusalem but to await the promise of the Father, which, he said, you have heard from my mouth. For John baptized with water, but you shall begin to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you shall also receive not many days from now, up to Pentecost. They indeed, when they had come together, asked him, saying: Lord, will you at this time present yourself, and when will the kingdom of Israel be? But he said: No one can know the time which the Father has set in his own power; but you shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the whole earth (Acts 1:1–8). Behold, you have where he recalled to the disciples the promise of the Father, which they had heard from his mouth concerning the Holy Spirit who was to come. Now let us see when he was sent.

For a little later it follows, and says: At that time, when the day of Pentecost was completed, they were all together in one mind in one place; and suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent blast being borne along, and it filled the whole place in which they were sitting; and there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, which also rested upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues, as the Spirit gave them to utter. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound was made, the crowd gathered and was confounded, because each one heard them speaking in his own language and in his own tongue. And they were amazed and marveled, saying to one another: Are not all these who are speaking Galileans by birth? And how do we recognize among them the speech in which we were born? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those who dwell in Mesopotamia, Armenia and Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Africa about Cyrene; and the Romans who had come, and Jews and proselytes, and Cretans and Arabs, heard them speaking in their own tongues the mighty works of God. And they were amazed and at a loss because of what had happened, saying: What does this mean? But others mocked, saying: These men are all full of new wine (Acts 2:1–13).

Behold where the Holy Spirit came: what more do you want? If the Scriptures are to be believed, why should I not rather believe these, which are confirmed by the most robust authority, which together with the Gospel itself—where we likewise believe in the promised Holy Spirit—deserved to be made known to the peoples and commended to posterity and proclaimed? When, then, I read these Acts of the Apostles, joined to the Gospel by equal authority, I find that the Holy Spirit was not only promised to those true apostles, but also sent so manifestly that no room was left on this matter for errors.

10. 11. For the glorification of our Lord among human beings is his resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven. But it is written in the Gospel: The Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified (John 7:39). If, then, the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified, then once Jesus was glorified the Spirit was necessarily given at once. And on account of that twofold glorification, according to the man and according to God, the Holy Spirit was also given twice: once, after he rose from the dead, when he breathed on the face of the disciples, saying: Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). And again, after he ascended into heaven, when ten days had passed—a number that signifies perfection, since to the number seven, by which the whole created order subsists, the Trinity of the Creator is added. About these matters many things are treated devoutly and carefully among spiritual men. But I will not depart from my purpose; for I undertook to deal with you in such a way that I should not teach you—which perhaps you think proud—but should rather strive, as it were, to learn from you what in nine years I could not learn. Therefore I have writings in which I may believe concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit; and if you forbid me to believe them, lest I rashly believe what I do not know—for this is how you are accustomed to admonish—much less will I believe your writings. Wherefore, either remove all books from our midst and lay open the truth by discussion, so that I cannot doubt it; or bring forth such books that what I am to believe is not imposed on me with arrogance, but what I am to learn is set forth without fraud. Perhaps, you say, this letter is also of that kind. I do not wish, then, to linger any longer on its threshold; let us look at what is within.

11. 12. These are, he says, wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain; and whoever shall hear them, and shall first have believed them, and then shall have kept what they teach, will never be subject to death, but will enjoy eternal and glorious life. For he is assuredly to be judged blessed who shall have been instructed by this divine knowledge, set free by which he will abide in everlasting life. And this, as you see, is a promise, not yet an exhibition of the truth; and you too can most easily notice that under this veil errors of every sort can be disguised, so as to creep secretly into the minds of the unlearned through an adorned doorway.

For if he were to say: These are pestilent words from a poisonous fountain; and whoever shall hear them, and shall first have believed them, and then shall have kept what they teach, will never be restored to life, but will be afflicted with a penal and wretched death (for he is assuredly to be judged wretched who shall have been entangled in this infernal ignorance, sunk down by which he will abide in everlasting torments)—if, then, he were to say this, he would say the truth; but he would not only win this book no reader, but would stir up to the greatest hatred all into whose hands it fell. Wherefore let us pass on to what follows, and let us not be deceived by words such as can be common to good men and bad, learned and unlearned. What, then, follows?

11. 13. The peace, he says, of the invisible God, and the knowledge of the truth, be with the holy and most dear brethren, who believe and likewise obey the heavenly commandments. So be it, as he says. For this too is a kind and most acceptable wish. Let us only remember that these things can be said both by good teachers and by deceivers. And so, if he said nothing but such things, I would grant that he should be read and embraced by all. Nor would I find fault with what follows; for he adds: But may the right hand of the light also protect you and rescue you from every evil assault and from the snares of the world. And in general, whatever is written at the beginning of this letter, until we come to the matter at hand, I do not wish to reproach, lest much effort be spent on lesser things. Now, then, let us look at the man's most evident promise.

12. 14. Concerning that, then, he says, most beloved brother Patticius, about which you signified to me, saying that you desire to know what sort the birth of Adam and Eve was—whether they were brought forth by a word, or born of a body—you will be answered as is fitting. For about these things it has been set down and recorded by very many in various scriptures and revelations in differing ways. Wherefore the truth of this matter, as it really stands, is unknown to almost all nations, and to all who have even argued about this long and much. For if it had befallen them to know clearly about the begetting of Adam and Eve, they would never be subject to corruption and death.

He promises us, then, manifest knowledge of this matter, that we may not be subject to corruption and death. And if that is still too little, see what follows: Necessarily, then, he says, several things must first be recalled, so that one may arrive at this mystery without any ambiguity. This is what I was saying: that the truth ought to be shown me in such a way that I arrive at it without any ambiguity. And even if he did not himself promise this, I ought nonetheless to demand and insist on it, so that, for so great a reward as the most evident and most certain knowledge, I should not be ashamed—against any who might contradict—to become from a catholic Christian a Manichean. Now, then, let us hear what he brings forward.

12. 15. So, if it seems good to you, he says, listen first to what existed before the founding of the world, and in what way the battle was waged, so that you may be able to separate the nature of light from that of darkness. Now he has set forth things wholly incredible and false. For who would believe that any battle was waged before the founding of the world? And yet, even if it were credible, we have come now not to believe but to know. For one who says that the Persians and Scythians warred with each other many years ago says a credible thing; yet it is something we can believe as heard or read, not know as experienced and grasped.

Since, then, I would reject this man if he said something of that sort—for he did not promise things I should be forced to believe, but things I could know without any ambiguity—how shall I not reject him when he says things not only uncertain but even incredible? But what then? What if by certain reasonings he will make these things clear and known? Let us hear, then, if we can, with all patience and mildness, what follows.

13. 16. These, he says, existed at the beginning: two substances divided from one another. And the empire of the light God the Father held, everlasting in his holy stock, magnificent in power, by his very nature true, ever exulting in his own eternity, containing within himself wisdom and the vital senses; through which he comprehended also the twelve members of his light, namely the overflowing riches of his own kingdom. And in each one of his members are stored thousands of countless and immense treasures. But the Father himself, preeminent in his own praise, incomprehensible in greatness, has joined to himself blessed and glorious ages, not to be reckoned either by number or by length, with whom the same holy and illustrious Father and Begetter dwells, with none in his renowned kingdoms set in want or weakness. And his most splendid kingdoms are so founded upon the bright and blessed earth that they can never be moved or shaken by anyone.

13. 17. From what source is he going to prove these things to me, or from what source did he himself come to know them? Do not frighten me with the name of the Paraclete. First, because I have come not to believe things unknown but to know things certain—made the more timid by you yourselves. For you know how vehemently you are accustomed to mock those who believe rashly, especially since the very man who has now begun to relate uncertain things promised, a little before, full and firm knowledge.

14. 17. Next, because, if faith is to be commanded of me, that Scripture would hold me more, where I read that the Holy Spirit came and inspired the apostles (See Acts 2:1–13), to whom the Lord had promised that he would send him (See Acts 1:5; John 14:16, 26; 16:7). Wherefore, either prove to me that the things he says are true, so as to show me what I cannot believe; or prove to me that he who says them is the Holy Spirit, so that I may believe what you cannot show. For I profess the catholic faith, and through it I presume that I shall arrive at certain knowledge; but you, who try to undermine my faith, hand over certain knowledge, if you can, so that you may convict me of having believed rashly what I believed.

Two things you offer me: one, when you say that it is the Holy Spirit who speaks; and the other, when you say that the things he speaks are manifest. Both of these I ought to know from you without any doubt; but I am not greedy—teach me one of these. Show that this is the Holy Spirit, and I will believe that the things he says are true, even if I do not know them; or show that the things he says are true, and I will believe that he is the Holy Spirit, even if I do not know it. Can anything be dealt with you more fairly or more kindly? But you can show neither this nor that. You have chosen nothing else but to praise what you believe and to mock what I believe. Since, then, I in turn shall praise what I believe and mock what you believe, what do you think is to be judged by us, or what is to be done, except that we leave behind those who invite us to know certain things and afterward command us to believe uncertain ones; and that we follow those who invite us first to believe what we are not yet able to behold, so that, made stronger by faith itself, we may deserve to understand what we believe—no longer with men, but with God himself inwardly enlightening and strengthening our mind?

14. 18. And since I have asked from what source he proves it to me, I now ask from what source he himself came to know it. If he says that it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, and that his mind was divinely enlightened, so that he knew the things he says as certain and manifest: he himself indicates what difference there is between knowing and believing. For he himself knows, to whom these things are shown most plainly; but to those to whom he relates them he does not impart knowledge but persuades belief. And whoever rashly assents to him becomes a Manichean—not by knowing certain things, but by believing uncertain ones; such as we were, the unlearned youths he once deceived.

He ought, then, not to have promised us knowledge, nor manifest cognition, nor arrival, without any ambiguity, at what is sought; but rather to have said that these things were shown to him, while those to whom they are related ought to believe him about what they do not know. But if he said this, who would not answer him: If, then, I am going to believe things unknown, why should I not rather believe those which are now celebrated by the agreement of the learned and the unlearned alike, and have been confirmed among all peoples by the weightiest authority? Fearing that this would be said to him, he pours out clouds before the unlearned: first promising knowledge of certain things, and afterward commanding faith in uncertain ones. Yet if it be said to him that he should at least teach that these things were shown to him, he likewise falls short, and bids us believe this too. Who could bear so great a deceit and so great a pride?

15. 19. But what if, with the help of God and our Lord, I show that the things he says are not only uncertain but also false? What can be found more wretched than this superstition, which not only does not exhibit the knowledge and truth it promises, but says things vehemently contrary to knowledge and truth?

This will appear more manifestly in what follows. For he speaks thus: But alongside one part and side of that illustrious and holy land was the land of darkness, deep and of immense magnitude, in which dwelt fiery bodies, that is, pestilential kinds. Here were boundless darknesses, flowing from the same nature, beyond all estimation, with their own broods; beyond which were foul and turbid waters with their inhabitants; within these, horrible and violent winds with their prince and progenitors. Again, a fiery and corruptible region with its leaders and nations. In like manner, further within, a people full of gloom and smoke, in which abode the monstrous prince of all and leader, having about him countless princes, of all of whom he himself was the mind and the origin: and these were the five natures of the pestilential land.

15. 20. If he were to say that the nature of God is an airy or even an ethereal body, he would surely be laughed at by all who are able—with however clear a gaze of a now serene mind—to behold the nature of wisdom and truth as stretched out and diffused through no spatial expanses, as great and magnificent without any mass, as not smaller in one part and greater in another, but equal throughout, equal to the most high Father, as not having one thing here and another elsewhere, but whole everywhere, present everywhere.

16. 20. But what shall I say of truth and wisdom, which surpass all the powers of the soul, when the very nature of the soul, which is found to be changeable, in no way occupies spatial expanses by any mass of its own? For whatever has any thickness can only be diminished by parts, having one thing here and another elsewhere.

For a finger is smaller than the whole hand; and one finger is smaller than two; and this finger is in one place, that one in another, and the rest of the hand in another. This we see not only in the jointed masses of bodies; but even this part of the earth is not where that part is, because each holds its own place; and a smaller part of a liquid is in a smaller place, and a greater part in a greater; and one part is around the bottom, another around the rim of the cup. Likewise the parts of the air each fill their own places; nor can it happen that the air with which this house is filled can hold within itself, together with itself, in the same house, also the air that the neighbors have; and of light itself one part is poured in through this window, another through that; and a greater part through a greater window, but a smaller part through a smaller.

Nor can there be any body at all—whether heavenly or earthly, whether airy or watery—that is not less in a part than in the whole; nor can it in any way hold another part in the place of this part; but, having one thing here and another elsewhere, it is stretched out through any spatial expanses by a separated and divided—or rather, so to speak, sliceable—mass.

But the nature of the soul—even if we consider not that power of it by which it understands truth, but that lower one by which it holds the body together and perceives in the body—is in no way found to be stretched out by any mass through spatial expanses. For it is wholly present to each particle of its body, since it perceives whole in each: nor is a smaller part of it in the finger and a greater in the arm, as the finger itself is smaller than the arm; but everywhere it is as great as it is, because everywhere it is whole.

For when a finger is touched, it does not perceive through the whole body, and yet it perceives whole. For that touch does not escape the whole; which would not happen unless it were wholly present. Nor is it so wholly present, when the finger is touched and it perceives in the finger, that it deserts the rest of the body and gathers itself to that one place where it perceives.

But when the soul perceives whole in the finger of the hand, if another place be touched in the foot, it does not there cease to perceive whole: and thus in the several distant places it is wholly present at once, not deserting one in order to be whole in another, nor so holding both that it has one part here and another elsewhere; but, sufficing to exhibit itself whole to the several places at once—since it perceives whole in each—it shows well enough that it is not held by spatial expanses.

17. 20. What if we consider its memory—not of intelligible things, but of these corporeal ones, which even beasts are perceived to have (for beasts of burden go without straying through known places, and wild beasts return to their lairs, and dogs recognize the bodies of their masters, and while sleeping often murmur and sometimes break into a bark, which they could in no way do unless in their memory there were turning the images of things seen, or somehow perceived through the body)—who could worthily conceive where these images are taken in, where they are carried, or where they are formed? For if they could not be greater than the magnitude of our body holds, someone might say that within the very expanses of its own body, by which it too is enclosed, the soul shapes and preserves these images.

But as it is, since the body occupies a very small part of the earth, the mind turns over the images of immense regions and of heaven and earth, which, as they depart and succeed one another in throngs, do not make it cramped: and from this it shows itself not to be spread out through places, because it is not, as it were, contained by the images of the greatest places, but rather contains them—not by any pocket, but by an unspeakable force and power, by which it is permitted to add to them whatever it pleases and to take away, and to contract them into a narrow space and to expand them through the immense, and to set them in order as it wishes, and to throw them into confusion, and to multiply them, and to reduce them to fewness or singleness.

18. 20. What now shall I say of that power by which truth is understood, by which, with great vigor, resistance is made to these very images, drawn from the body's sense and set up as figures, when they oppose themselves in the place of truth? By which it is seen that one Carthage, for example, is the true one, and another the one which the thinker imagines and changes at his own will with complete ease: that from the same ease come countless worlds, in which the thought of Epicurus wandered countlessly: and, not to pursue many things, that from the same ease comes that land of light spread out through infinite spaces, and the five caverns of the people of darkness with their inhabitants, in which the phantasms of Mani have dared to usurp for themselves the name of truth.

What, then, is this power that discerns these things? Surely, however great it is, it is both greater than all of them, and is conceived without any such imagination of things. Find spaces for it, if you can; spread it through places; stretch it out with the swelling of an infinite mass. Surely, if you think rightly, you cannot. For whatever of that sort occurs to you, you judge can be cut into parts by thought itself, and there you make one part smaller, another larger, as much as you please; but that very thing by which you judge these things, you discern to be above them, not by loftiness of place, but by dignity of power.

19. 21. Wherefore, if the soul—so often changeable, whether by the crowd of its varied acts of will, or by its affections bending themselves according to the abundance or scarcity of things, or by the very countless games of phantasms, or by forgetfulness and memory, or by learning and ignorance—if, then, you perceive that the soul, as I said, so often changeable by these and the like motions, is not spread out and extended through places, but surpasses all such spaces by the vigor of its power: what is to be thought or judged of God himself, who, remaining above all rational minds unshaken and unchangeable, bestows on each what is to be bestowed? Whom the soul more easily dares to speak of than to see; and whom it speaks of the less, the more purely it has been able to see him.

And yet, if—as the phantasms of the Manicheans clamor—he were stretched out, bounded on one side by place and extending on the others through immense space: however many little particles, and countless other fragments, some larger and some smaller, would be measured in him according to the thinker's will; so that a two-foot part in him, for example, would be eight parts smaller than a ten-foot one. For this must necessarily happen to all natures which, spread out through such spaces, cannot be whole everywhere: which is not found in the soul itself, and is believed of it in a misshapen and base way by those who are not able to consider these things.

20. 22. Nevertheless, with carnal minds perhaps one should not deal in this way, but should rather descend to the thoughts of those who, by thinking, either do not dare or are not yet able to follow incorporeal and spiritual nature—so that they do not consider even their own thought by that same thought, and find it judging concerning spatial expanses by no spatial expanse. Let us descend, then, to their senses, and ask of them alongside what part and alongside what side, as Mani says, was the land of darkness alongside that illustrious and holy land. For he says, alongside one part and side; nor does he say which part, or which side, the right or the left. But let them choose whichever they please; this at least is manifest, that no one side is spoken of except where there is also another side. But where there are either three or more sides, either a figure is understood whose circuit is bounded on every side, or, if it extends without measure in some direction, it must yet be bounded by those which are called sides.

Let them say, then, on the other side, or on the other sides, what adjoined the land of light, if on one side was the people of darkness? They do not say; but when they are pressed to say, they say that the other sides of that land which they call light are infinite—that is, that it is stretched out through infinite spaces and confined by no end. Nor do they understand that they are then no longer sides, which is most plain even to any slow wits. For they would be sides only if they were bounded by their own limits.

What does it matter to me, he says, if there are no sides? But when you said, alongside one part and side, you forced another part also, or parts, and another side, or sides, to be understood. For if there was only one side, it ought to have been said only "alongside the side," not alongside one side. Just as in our body we rightly say there is something alongside one eye, because there is another eye; or alongside one breast, because there is another. But if we say alongside one nose, or alongside one navel, when there is no other, we shall be laughed at by the learned and the unlearned. But I do not press you with words; for perhaps by "one" you wished to say "single."

21. 22. What, then, was alongside that side of the land which you call illustrious and holy? The land, you say, of darkness. What about this land—do you grant at least that it was corporeal? You must necessarily say this, since you assert that all bodies draw their origin from it. What, then, I ask—however slow, however carnal you men are—do you never even at some point notice this, that these two lands could not be joined to each other by sides unless both were corporeal? Why, then, was it said to us, perverted by I know not what blindness, that only the land of darkness was or is corporeal, but that the one called the land of light ought to be believed incorporeal and spiritual? Let us at last wake up, good men, and, at least when admonished, let us attend to what is most easy: that two lands cannot be joined to each other by sides unless each is a body.

21. 23. Or if even to these things we are dull and slow, I ask whether the land of darkness too had one side and the rest infinite, like the land of light. They do not so believe; for they fear lest it seem equal to God. They say, then, that it is immense in depth and in length; but upward, above it, they affirm spaces of infinite emptiness. And lest it seem to hold even a single measure while the land of light holds a double one, they narrow it on two sides as well. As if—for thus what is said can more easily be seen—if one loaf were shaped crosswise into four quarters, of which three were white and one black: now take from the three white ones their distinction, and make them infinite both upward and downward and on every side behind: thus by them the land of light is believed to be. But that black quarter make infinite downward and behind, but having above it an immense emptiness: thus they suppose the land of darkness to be. But these things they show, as secrets, only to those who attend very closely and inquire studiously.

22. 23. Nevertheless, if this is so, it appears that the land of darkness is touched on two sides by the land of light. And surely, if it is touched on two, it also touches on two. Certainly alongside one side was the land of darkness.

22. 24. Then, how unsightly the shape of the land of light appears—like a split hoof with a certain black wedge wedged in beneath it, bounded only there where it is split, gaping too and open above, with the empty space interposed for whatever rises immense from the surface of the land of darkness upward. How much better, then, is shown the shape of the very land of darkness: since the one splits, this one is split; the one is inserted, this one lies open between; the one gives place in itself to no emptiness, this one is loose only in its lower part, where it is wedged full by the hostile wedge.

Unlearned and greedy men, then, since they give greater honor to a multitude of parts than to unity, in order to give six parts to the land of light, three downward and three upward, preferred that the land of light be penetrated rather than that it penetrate. For by such a shape, even if they deny that it is mingled, they nevertheless cannot deny that it is penetrated.

23. 25. Now compare—not the spiritual men of the catholic faith, in whom the mind discerns, as far as the mind can in this life, that the divine substance and nature is stretched out by no spatial expanses, shaped by no dimensions of outline; but compare our carnal and little ones, who, when they hear of certain members of our body spoken of in allegory—as when the eyes of God and the ears of God are mentioned—are accustomed, by the license of phantasy, to figure God to themselves in the appearance of a human body:

compare these now with those Manicheans who are accustomed to describe these trifles, as though great secrets, to intent and curious men: and consider which of them feel more tolerably and more honorably about God—whether those who think of him in a human form, endowed with the highest dignity in its own kind, or those who think of him as spread out in an infinite mass, yet not on every side, but infinite and dense on three quarters, while on one quarter cleft, open, gaping, loose above with emptiness, wedged below with the land of darkness; or, if it is better so to say, open above by its own nature, entered below by another's.

Behold, with you I deride the carnal men who cannot yet think spiritual things and suppose God to be of a human form: deride you too with me, if you can, those who imagine, with a most pitiable thought, so misshapen and base a fissure or rending of God, so emptily gaping above, so dishonorably stopped up below. There is also this difference: that those carnal men who think of God in a human form, if, content within the bosom of the catholic Church, where they must be nourished with milk, they do not hurl themselves into rash opinions but there nourish a devout zeal of seeking, there ask that they may receive, there knock that it may be opened to them, begin to understand the allegories and parables of the Scriptures spiritually, and gradually to taste that the divine powers are fittingly named in one place by ears, in another by eyes, in another by hands or feet, or even by wings and feathers, and by a shield too and a sword and a helmet, and by the names of countless other such things. And the more they advance in this understanding, the more they are confirmed as catholics. But the Manicheans, once they have abandoned the imagination of that figure, will not be able to be Manicheans. For they attribute this, as though something proper and chief, to the praises of their founder: that they say that those things which were set down figuratively by the ancients in the divine books as divine mysteries were reserved to be unraveled and shown by this man who was to come last; and that therefore after him no teacher would come divinely sent, because he said nothing through allegories and figures, since he both laid open the ancients' things that had been such and showed his own things clearly and manifestly.

These men, then, have no interpretations to fall back on, when there is read to them, concerning their founder: But alongside one part and side of that illustrious and holy land was the land of darkness. Wherever they turn, they must necessarily—cramped by the wretchedness of their phantasms—fall into rendings, or abrupt cuttings and joinings, or most unsightly fissures; which it is most wretched to believe, I will not say of the unchangeable nature of God, but of any incorporeal nature, however changeable, such as the soul is.

And yet, if I could not raise myself to higher things, nor unfold my thoughts from the false imaginations which I carry fixed in my memory through the bodily senses, into the freedom and purity of spiritual nature: how much better would I think of God in the form of a human body, than fasten that black wedge to his lower fissure and leave the vast looseness above—finding nothing with which to stop it up—thus open and gaping with immense emptiness? What is more unsightly than this opinion? What darker than this error can be said or imagined?

24. 26. Next, I want it told me, when I read God the Father, and his kingdoms founded above the bright and blessed earth, whether the Father, and his kingdoms, and the earth are of one and the same substance and nature. For if it is so, then it is no longer, as it were, another nature—which is, as it were, the body of God—that the wedge of the people of darkness cleaves and penetrates (which indeed would itself be most base with unspeakable deformity), but it is the very nature of God that the wedge of the land of darkness cleaves and penetrates. I beg you, think on these things; you are human beings; I beg you, think on these things, and flee, and tear out and drive away from your faith, with rent breasts if it can be done, the sacrileges of such phantasms.

Or are you going to say that those three are not of one and the same nature, but that the Father is of one, the kingdoms of another, the earth of another, so that each has its own diverse natures and substances, ordered by degrees of excellence? But if this is true, Mani ought to have preached not two natures but four. But if the Father and the kingdoms have one nature, and only the earth a diverse one, three natures ought to have been preached.

Or if he preferred to say two for this reason, that the land of darkness does not pertain to God, I ask how the land of light pertains to God. For if it both has a diverse nature, and he did not beget it nor make it, it does not pertain to him, and his kingdoms are set in what is another's.

Or if it pertains to him because it is near, let the land of darkness pertain too, which not only touches the land of light by nearness, but even furrows it apart by penetration. But if he begot it, it ought not to be believed to have a diverse nature. For what God begot must be believed to be what God is, as is believed in the catholic Church concerning the only-begotten Son.

And so necessity calls you back to that baseness which is to be fled and detested: that the black wedge cleaves not the earth as though another and diverse, but the very nature of God. But if God did not beget it, but made it, I ask from what he made it. If from himself, what else is this than to have begotten it? If from some other nature, I ask whether good or evil. If good, then there was some good nature that did not pertain to God—which you will in no way dare to say. But if evil, then that people of darkness was not the only evil nature.

Or had God perhaps already taken from it some part, which he might turn into the land of light, and establish his kingdoms upon it? He would then have done this from the whole of it, so that now there would be no evil nature at all. But if he did not make the land of light from another's substance, it remains that he made it from nothing.

25. 27. Wherefore, if you are now persuaded that God almighty can make something good from nothing, come into the catholic Church; and learn that all the natures which God made and founded, ordered by degrees of excellence from the highest to the lowest, are all good, but some more excellent than others; and that they were made from nothing, when God the Maker, through his wisdom, worked, so to speak, potentially, so that what was not might be: and insofar as it had being, it was good; but insofar as it fell short, it showed itself not begotten of God but made by him from nothing.

For if you consider, you find nothing that holds you: since you can neither say that the land of light which you describe is what God is, lest the very nature of God be cramped by the baseness of that quarter; nor that it was begotten of him, lest it nonetheless be forced to be understood as what God is, and return to the same deformity; nor that it is foreign to him, lest you be pressed to say that he set his kingdoms in what is another's, and to preach not two but three natures; nor that it was made by him from another's substance, lest either there were another good besides God, or another evil besides the people of darkness.

It remains, then, for you to confess that God made the land of light from nothing; and you are unwilling to believe that, if God could make from nothing some great good which was nevertheless inferior to himself, he could also—since he is good and envies no good—make another good, which should be inferior to that first; and a third, to which the second should be preferred; and so lead the order of created natures down to the lowest good, until the whole of them, not flowing apart uncertainly with an undefined number, should stand fixed within a certain limit. Or if you are unwilling to confess even that God made this land of light from nothing, there will be no way out by which you may escape such great basenesses and such sacrilegious opinions.

25. 28. Or see, at any rate—since carnal thought is free to imagine phantasms of whatever sort it pleases—whether perhaps you can find any other shape for this joining of the two lands, so that so detestable and repugnant a face of things may not present itself to the mind: namely, that the land of God—whether it be of the same nature as God, or of a diverse one, but one in which the kingdoms of God are nonetheless founded—lies in so vast a mass through the immense, that it lies with members stretched out and open through the infinite, by which, most foully and most basely, it receives in its lower part even that wedge of the land of darkness, itself of immense magnitude, cramped within it. But whatever other figure you find, by which these two lands may be joined to each other, you certainly cannot blot out the writings of Mani: I do not mean those others in which he described these things more expressly—for perhaps, because they are known to fewer, they may seem to have less danger—but these very ones now under discussion, of the Letter of the Foundation, which is usually most well known to almost all who among you are called enlightened. For here it is written thus: But alongside one part and side of that illustrious and holy land was the land of darkness, deep and of immense magnitude.

26. 28. What more do we wait for? For we hold that it was alongside the side. Now imagine the figures however you please, and describe whatever outlines you please; that mass, at any rate, of the immense land of darkness was joined to the land of light either by a straight side, or a curved one, or a crooked one. But if by a crooked one, then that holy land too has a crooked side: for if it itself has a straight side, and is touched by the crooked side of this one, certain deep caverns lie open between them, empty through the infinite, and now there was emptiness not only above the land of darkness, as we used to hear. But if this is so, how much better it would have been for the land of light to remove itself somewhat farther off, and for so great an emptiness to lie between, that it could in no part at all be touched by the land of darkness; nay, that so great a space of empty depth should lie open that, if any wickedness of that people should arise—even if the princes of darkness rashly wished to leap across into that land (since bodies cannot fly unless supported by a corporeal air)—they would be hurled down through that void, and, since it would be infinite downward, never arriving at any bottom, even if they could live forever, could yet never, while they are ever borne downward, do harm?

But if it was joined by a curved side, the land of light too received it deformedly with a curved hollow. Or if this land was inwardly curved, as in the shape of a theater, it embraced with such a hollow the curved part of the land of light, received with a no less deformed coupling. Or if this had a curved side and that a straight one, it did not touch it on the whole side. And surely it would have been better, as I said above, that it touch on no part, and that so great a void lie between, both to separate the two lands by a just interval, and to allow the rash wicked ones, hurled headlong through the infinite, to do no harm.

But if a straight side touched a straight side, I do not indeed see any receptacles or gaps; but I plainly see so great a peace and so great a concord of each land with the other, that there could be no greater joining. For what is more beautiful, what more fitting, than for straight to be so coupled to straight that no hollow or bend on any part breaks apart or sunders the natural and stable juncture, through infinite space of place and from infinite eternity? These straight sides of each land, even if they were separated by a void interposed, would not only be beautiful in themselves, because they were so straight, but, even with the interval set between, would so agree with each other that, on this side and on that, their equal straightnesses would come together into one beauty, even without any joining, by their very likeness. But when this joining is added, what is more concordant and peaceful than each of these two lands? And what more beautiful can be said or thought than the very coupling of the two straight sides, I do not find.

27. 29. What shall I do with these most wretched souls, perverted by error and entangled by habit? For these men do not know what they say when they say these things; for they do not attend. I beg you, no one urges you, no one presses you into a contest, no one insults your past errors—none but one who has not experienced the divine mercy, that he might be without errors. Let us only labor for this, that they may at some time be ended. Look a little, without animosity and bitterness. We are all human beings; let us hate not one another, but errors and falsehoods. I beg you, look a little. God of mercies, help those who look, and to those who seek the truth kindle the inner light.

For what do we understand, if we do not understand that straight is better than crooked? I ask you, then—if you take it calmly and modestly—if someone were to make crooked the straight side of the land of darkness, which is joined to the straight side of the land of light, would he take away no beauty from it? You must necessarily confess, unless you wish to bark, that not only would beauty be taken from it, if it were made crooked, but also that beauty which it could have in common with the straight side of the land of light. Taking this away, then, and making crooked out of straight, so that what was in concord should be in discord and what was fitting should be repugnant—would he thereby take away any substance?

Learn, then, in this way, that evil is not a substance; but that, just as in a body, by a change of form for the worse, the form is lost, or rather diminished, and what was before called beautiful is called unsightly, and the body which had before pleased now displeases: so in the mind the grace of a right will, by which one lives devoutly and justly, is depraved when the will is changed for the worse; and by this sin the soul, which by the integrity of a right will possessed happiness, is made wretched, with no substance added or taken away.

27. 30. Then consider also this: that even if we grant, for other reasons, that the side of the land of darkness is evil—because it is dark, because it is shadowy, or for whatever else can be said—yet it is not evil in respect of what is straight. As, then, I grant that there is something evil in its color, so you too must necessarily grant that there is something good in its straightness. It is therefore wicked to alienate this—however much good it is—from God the Maker, from whom comes all the good that is in any nature, which unless we believe, we err most ruinously. How, then, does he both say that this land is the highest evil, in whose straightness of side I find, as far as the body is concerned, a good of no small beauty; and wish it to be utterly alien from God almighty and most good, when the very good that we find in it, to whom else it is to be attributed but to the author of all goods, we do not find? But that side too was evil, he says. Suppose it was evil: it would surely be worse if it were not straight but distorted. How, then, is it the highest evil, than which something worse can be thought? Then there must necessarily be some good, by lacking which any thing is made worse. But by lacking straightness that side would be made worse. There is, then, in it something good—straightness. And you will never tell me whence it is in it, unless you betake yourself to him from whom, whether great or small, we confess that all things are nevertheless good. But now let us pass from the consideration of this side to other matters.

28. 31. There dwelt, he says, in that land fiery bodies, that is, pestilential kinds. When he says they dwelt, he certainly wishes them to be understood as animate and living. But lest we seem to want to cavil at a word, let us attend to all those inhabitants of that land, how he distributes them into five living kinds. Here, he says, were boundless darknesses, flowing from the same nature, beyond all estimation, with their own broods; beyond which were foul and turbid waters with their inhabitants; within these, horrible and violent winds with their prince and progenitors. Again, a fiery and corruptible region with its leaders and nations. In like manner, further within, a people full of gloom and smoke, in which abode the monstrous prince and leader of all, having about him countless princes, of all of whom he himself was the mind and the origin: and these were the five natures of the pestilential land.

We notice five natures as though parts of one nature, which he calls the pestilential land. These are: darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke; which five natures he so orders that the darkness, from which he begins to number, is outermost of the rest. Within the darkness he sets the waters; within the waters, the winds; within the winds, the fire; within the fire, the smoke. And these five natures each had their own kinds of inhabitants, which are nonetheless five. For I ask whether there was one kind of inhabitants in all five natures, or diverse kinds, as the natures themselves are diverse. They answer that they were diverse, and so teach from their other books: that the darkness had serpents; the waters, swimming things, such as fish; the winds, flying things, such as birds; the fire, four-footed things, such as horses, lions, and the like; the smoke, two-footed things, such as human beings.

29. 32. Who, then, ordered these things? Who distributed and distinguished them? Who gave them number, qualities, forms, life? For all these things are in themselves good, nor is it found whence they are bestowed on any nature except by God, the author of all goods.

For not as the poets too are accustomed to describe chaos, or in whatever way to suggest it—a certain formless matter without form, without quality, without measure, without number and weight, without order and distinction, a confused something-or-other, and wholly devoid of all quality, whence certain Greek teachers call it ἄποιον:

not so, then, do these men try to suggest this which they call the land of darkness; but wholly otherwise, and far differently and contrariwise, they join and align side to side: they count five natures, distinguish them, order them, declare them by their proper qualities; nor do they allow them to be deserted and barren, but fill them with their own inhabitants; and to these very inhabitants they attribute forms suited and accommodated to their dwellings, and—what surpasses all—life. To enumerate these so great goods, and to say that they are alien from God, the author of all goods, is to acknowledge neither so great a good of order in things, nor so great an evil of error in oneself.

30. 33. But those five kinds, he says, inhabiting those natures, were savage and pestilential. As though I praised in them their savagery and pestilence. Behold, with you I find fault with what you charge to be evil in them: praise you with me what you yourself recall to be good in them: so you will see that you wish to set up good things mingled with evil for the highest and uttermost evil. With you I find fault there with the pestilence: praise there with me the health. For those kinds could not have been begotten, nor nourished, nor have dwelt in that land, without some health.

With you I find fault there with the darkness: praise there with me the fruitfulness. For you call the darknesses beyond estimation; and yet you add, with their own broods. Although darkness is not corporeal; and this whole name is the absence of light: as nakedness is to lack clothing, and emptiness is to be void of the fullness of body: and therefore darkness could beget nothing, although a dark land—that is, one lacking light—could beget something. But for now let us pass this over: yet where broods arise, there is both a temperament fit for health, and a certain numerous concord that orders and builds up into unity the members of the things being born, fitting one to another by a peace of moderation. All of which who does not understand to be worthy of greater praise than the darkness is worthy of reproach?

With you I find fault there with the turbid mire of the waters: praise there with me both the very form and quality of the waters, and the fitting members of the swimming inhabitants, the life containing and ruling the body, and every temperament accommodated to the health of its kind. For however much you reproach the foul and turbid waters, yet by the very fact that you say they are such waters as could both beget and contain their living things, you cannot take away the form of that body, whatever it is, and the likeness of parts by which they are formed and made peaceful into one quality; because if you take it away, there will be no body: all of which, if you are a human being, you perceive are to be praised.

And however much you exaggerate the savagery of those inhabitants, and amid their onslaughts their tearings and devastations, yet you do not take from them the numerous limits of forms, by which their several bodies are made peaceful by the equality of members, and the temperament of health, and the governance of a soul reducing the parts of its body into a unity of friendship and concord: which, if you behold them with human perception, you see to be more worthy of praise than those things which displease are worthy of reproach.

With you I find fault there with the horror of the winds: praise there with me the breathable and nourishing nature of those same winds, and the form of a body of continuous and diffused parts fitting together: by all which things they could both beget, and feed, and healthfully contain those inhabitants of theirs; and, of those inhabitants—besides the other things which in all living creatures were praised above on a higher account—praise especially their tireless and easy passages whence they will and whither they will, and the concordant effort of their wings in flight, and their not unequal motion.

With you I find fault there with the corruption of the fire: praise there with me the generative fire, and its vigorous and opportune temperateness for the things being born, both that they might coalesce, and that they might be perfected by their own numbers and outlines, and that they might be able to live and dwell there: all of which you recognize to be marvelous and praiseworthy not only in the dwelling of fire, but also in the very dwellers themselves.

With you I find fault there with the obscurity of the smoke, and the monstrousness of the prince who, as you say, abode in it: praise there with me that even in the smoke itself you find no part unlike the rest; whereby, in its kind, it keeps the agreement and measure of its parts among themselves, so that by a certain unity it is what it is: which no one soberly considers and does not marvelously praise. What of this—that you add to the smoke too a force and power of begetting, when you assign to it likewise inhabitants and a prince: so that—what here we have never seen—there the smoke is fruitful, and offers a healthful dwelling to its inhabitants?

31. 34. Since in the very prince of the smoke too you noticed only the monstrousness, which you might reproach, ought you not to have attended to the other things which would force you to praise his nature? For he had a soul and a body; the one giving life, the other quickened by life: since the one ruled, the other obeyed; the one led the way, the other followed; the one held together, the other did not flow apart; the one moved into numbers, the other was made firm by the numerous framework of its members. Does not the ordered peace, or the peaceful order, in this one prince move you to praise?

But what is said of one may be understood of the rest. Yet he was fierce and monstrous toward others? This I do not praise, but those so great things which you will not attend to. And if anyone who has rashly believed Mani beholds and considers them, even when admonished, he will know without doubt that, when he speaks of these natures, he speaks of certain goods—but not the highest and unmade goods, such as God, the one Trinity, is; nor of those made goods which are loftily ordered, such as the holy angels and the most blessed powers are: but of the lowest goods, ordered according to the measure of their kind at the bottom of the order of things; which, while they are compared with higher ones, are reckoned by the unlearned to be worthy of reproach; and while it is considered how much of the good that is present in the higher ones is lacking to them, the absence of that same good bears the name of evil. And I, indeed, dispute about these natures in this way, because the things named are those which are known to us in this world.

For we know darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke; we know also animals that creep, swim, fly, are four-footed, are two-footed: in all of which, except the darkness—which, as I said, is nothing else than the absence of light, things discerned by the eyes by not being seen, as silence by the ears by not being heard; not because darkness is something, but because light is not; just as not because silence is something, but because sound is not—excepting the darkness, then, in this enumeration, the rest are natures, and known to all; whose form, because in whatever measure it is, it is praiseworthy and good, no prudent person alienates from God, the author of all goods.

32. 35. For that Mani, just as he wished to order in his phantasms—as in the people of darkness—the natures which he had learned here, is convicted of being wholly false. First, because darkness can beget nothing, as has been said. But those darknesses, he says, were not such as you know here. From what source, then, do you teach me about them? Or do you perhaps, so verbose a promiser of doctrine, force me to believe? But suppose you make me believe. This I nevertheless know: that if they had no form—as these here have none—they could beget nothing; but if they had, they were better. But you, when you say they were not such, want them, as it were, to be believed worse.

You could say too that silence—which is to the ears what darkness is to the eyes—there begot certain deaf or mute animals: so that, when it was said to you that silence is not any nature, you would answer: But not such silence as you know here; so that you might say whatever you wished to those whom you had once deceived into believing you.

Although the thing that led him to invent that creeping things were born in the darkness could well have been observed in the very first beginnings of things being born. But there are serpents that see so keenly, and so exult at the presence of light, that they seem to give the weightiest testimony against him.

Next, it was easy to learn here that swimming things are in the waters, and to transfer this to those phantasms; so too that flying things are in the winds, since the impulse of this denser air, in which birds fly about, is called wind. But how it came into his mind to imagine four-footed things in fire, I do not know. And yet he did not say this for nothing, but he attended too little, and erred too much. For this is the reason they are accustomed to give: that four-footed things are voracious, and burn greatly in lust. But many human beings surpass any four-footed thing in their voracity—human beings who are certainly two-footed, whom he says are not sons of fire but of smoke. And than geese nothing more voracious is easily found: which, whether he place them in the smoke, because they are two-footed; or in the waters, because they love to swim; or in the winds, because they are feathered and sometimes fly: certainly, according to his distinction, they do not pertain to fire. As for the burning of lust, I believe he had noticed neighing horses, often snatched toward the females with bits bitten through: which, while he wishes to write down quickly what he has noticed, he does not attend to the wall-sparrow, in comparison with which any stallion is found most cold.

But when they are asked why he ordered the two-footed in the smoke, they answer that the two-footed kind is elated and proud; for from this, they say, human beings draw their origin: and since smoke rises in globes and, as it were, swollen into the breezes, they noticed—not absurdly—that it is like the proud. Which observation ought to have sufficed for giving some likeness about proud men, or for an allegory either to be framed or understood: but not so that two-footed living things should therefore be believed to be born in the smoke and from the smoke. For they ought also to have been born in dust, because it too often rises into the sky with no less sweep and elation; and in mists, because they are for the most part so exhaled from the earth that to those who look from afar they make it uncertain whether it is smoke or mist.

Finally, since in the waters and winds the argument for the inhabitants was drawn from their capacity to dwell there, because we see both swimming things live in waters and flying things in winds: did not fire and smoke deter the lying man, so that he might be ashamed to set up there such inhabitants, than which nothing could be set up more absurd? For fire burns and destroys a four-footed creature, and smoke chokes and kills the two-footed. Or here at least he is forced to confess that he says these natures were better in the people of darkness, where he wishes all things to be believed worse. Since there the fire begot a four-footed creature and nourished it and contained it harmlessly, or even most conveniently. Likewise the smoke had brought up its two-footed creatures, brought forth from its most gentle bosom, not only without distress but vitally and indulgently, even up to that principate, and contained them.

Thus these lies are shown for what they are, conceived by a carnal perception—from the observation of things seen in the world, but a less diligent and less skillful one—and brought to birth by phantasms, and put forth and written down rashly, to swell the number of heretics.

33. 36. But they are to be pressed rather by this argument, so that they may understand, if they can, how truly it is said in the catholic Church that God is the author of all natures: the argument I was treating above, when I said: With you I find fault with the pestilence, the blindness, the turbid mire, the horrible violence, the corruptibility, the monstrousness of the princes, and the like: praise you with me the form, the distinction, the ordering, the peace, the unity of forms, the agreements of members and the numerous equalities, the vital breaths and nourishments, the temperament of health, the rule and governance of the soul and the service of the bodies, the likeness and concord of the parts in each nature—whether the natures that dwelt, or those that were dwelt in—and other such things.

For thus they understand, if only they will attend without obstinacy, that they are now mingling both goods and evils, when they speak of that land where they believed there was only and the highest evil: and so, if those things which were enumerated as evils be taken away, those goods which were praised remain without any reproach; but if the goods themselves be taken away, no nature remains. From which one who can see now sees that every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is a good: because out of one and the same thing, in which both I found something to praise and he something to reproach, if the things that are good be taken away, there will be no nature; but if the things that displease be taken away, the nature will remain uncorrupted.

Take from the waters that they be not foul and turbid, and pure and tranquil waters remain: take from the waters the concord of parts, and there will be no waters. If, then, with that evil removed a purer nature remains, but with the good taken away no nature remains: that which it has of good is what makes the nature there; but what is evil is not nature, but against nature. Take from the winds the horror and excessive violence that displeases you, and you can think of gentle and moderate winds: take from the winds the likeness of parts, by which their body is held continuous in unity and made peaceful with itself so as to be a body, and no nature will remain for you to think of. It is tedious to pursue the rest: but it is manifest to those who judge with no partiality of parts that, when these natures are mentioned, certain things are joined to them by which they displease; and when we take these away, the natures remain better.

From which it is understood that they, insofar as they are natures, are good: because when, in turn, you have taken from them all that they have of good, they will be no natures. Notice also, you who wish to judge rightly, that monstrous prince too: from whom, if monstrousness be taken away, attend to how many praiseworthy things will remain: the framework of the body, the agreement of members on this side and that, the unity of form, and the peace of the parts woven together among themselves; the order and arrangement of the soul ruling and quickening, and of the served and quickened body. All which goods if they be taken away, and any I have perhaps too little enumerated, no nature at all will subsist.

34. 37. But perhaps you may say that those evils cannot be taken from such natures, and that therefore they must be accepted as natural. The question now is not what can or cannot be taken away; but it is surely no small light for understanding that all natures, insofar as they are natures, are good, that without those evils those goods can be thought, but without those goods no nature can be thought. For without the disturbance of mire I can think of waters: but without the peace of continuous parts, no form of body occurs to the mind, or can in any way be perceived; and thus not even those muddy waters could exist without that good by which it came about that there could be some corporeal nature. For as to what you say—that those evils cannot be taken from such natures—the answer is that those goods too cannot be taken from such natures. Why, then, on account of evils which you judge cannot be taken away, do you wish to call these things natural evils; while on account of those goods which you are convicted of being unable to take away, you are unwilling to call them natural goods?

34. 38. It remains that you ask (for this is usually the last word) whence come those evils which I too said displeased me. I will answer, perhaps, if you first say whence come those goods which you too are forced to praise, unless you wish to be of a most absurd heart. But why should I ask this, when we both confess that all goods, of whatever sort and however great, are from the one God, who is supremely good?

Resist, then, you yourselves, Mani, who judged that so many and such great goods as we have recalled and justly praised—the peace and concord of parts in each nature, the health and vigor of living things, and the rest which it now wearies me to repeat—were in the fabricated land of darkness in such a way that he tried to alienate them from that God whom he confesses to be the author of all goods. For he did not see those goods, while he attended only to what displeased: just as if someone, terrified by the roar of a lion, and beholding it dragging and tearing the bodies of whatever cattle or human beings it had seized, were, by a certain childish weakness of mind, struck with so great a fear that—beholding only the ferocity and savagery of the lion, neglecting and passing over entirely all its other features—he should cry out that the nature of that living creature was not only an evil, but a great evil; and the more exaggeratedly, the more timidly. But if, with its ferocity tamed, he saw the lion led gentle—especially if he had never before been terrified by that beast—then he would be free, secure and unafraid, to consider and praise the beauty of the lion.

About which I will say nothing, except what most pertains to the matter: that it can happen that some nature gives offense by something, and hatred is born toward the whole of it; when it is manifest that the appearance of a true and living beast is far better, even when it terrifies in the forests, than that of one imitated and feigned when it is praised painted on a wall. Let him not, then, by this error deceive us, nor make us blind to the consideration of the forms of natures, when he so reproaches certain things in them as to force them to displease on every part, which he cannot reproach on every part: and in this way, composing our mind to a fair judgment, let us now ask whence come, together with those goods, the evils which I too said I disapproved. Which we shall see more easily if we can bring all of them together under one name.

35. 39. For who doubts that all that is called evil is nothing else than corruption? Various evils can indeed be named by various names; but what is the evil of all things in which some evil can be noticed, is corruption. But the corruption of a skilled soul is called unskillfulness; the corruption of a prudent one, imprudence; of a just one, injustice; of a brave one, cowardice; of a quiet and tranquil one, desire or fear or sadness or boastfulness. Then in an animate body, the corruption of health is pain and disease; the corruption of strength, weariness; the corruption of rest, toil. Then in the body itself alone, the corruption of beauty is unsightliness; the corruption of straightness, crookedness; the corruption of order, perversity; the corruption of integrity, division, or fracture, or diminution. It is long and difficult to name one by one all the corruptions both of these things I have mentioned and of countless others; since many that are said of the body can also be said of the soul, and there are countless things in which corruption holds its proper names. Nevertheless it is now easy to see that corruption harms nothing except by undermining the natural state; and therefore that it is not a nature, but against nature. But if no evil is found in things except corruption, and corruption is not a nature, then no nature at all is an evil.

35. 40. But if perhaps you are not able to understand this, attend to this: that everything which is corrupted is diminished in some good: because if it were not corrupted, it would be incorrupt; but if it could not be corrupted at all, it would be incorruptible. But it is necessary that either incorruption or incorruptibility be a good, if corruption is an evil. But now there is no question about an incorruptible nature: we are dealing with those things which can be corrupted, which, while they are not corrupted, can be called incorrupt, but cannot be called incorruptible. For that alone is properly called incorruptible which not only is not corrupted, but also cannot in any part be corrupted. Whatever things, then, are incorrupt and yet can be corrupted, when they have begun to be corrupted, are by that very fact diminished in the good by which they were incorrupt; and indeed in a great good, because corruption is a great evil: and as long as corruption can be increased in them, so long do they have a good in which they may be diminished.

Wherefore those natures which he imagines to have been in the land of darkness either could be corrupted or could not. If they could not, they were incorruptible, than which good there is nothing higher. If they could, either they were being corrupted, or they were not: if they were not being corrupted, they were incorrupt, which we see cannot be said without great praise: but if they were being corrupted, they were being diminished in that so great good; if they were being diminished in a good, they had a good in which they might be diminished; and if they had a good, those natures were not the highest evil, and the whole fable of Mani is false.

36. 41. But since we have asked what evil is, and have learned that this is not a nature but against nature, we must consequently ask whence it is: which if he had done, he would perhaps have slipped less into these straits of so great an error. For he asked—hastily and backwards—whence it was, before he had asked what it was: and therefore nothing could occur to him as he sought but empty phantasms, of which a mind much fed on carnal senses is divested with difficulty. Someone will say, then—desiring now not to wrangle but not to err—Whence is this corruption, which, as it were a general evil of things good but nevertheless corruptible, we have discovered to be? One who seeks thus quickly finds, if he seeks the truth with great ardor and knocks devoutly with constant perseverance. For through human beings some reminding can be made by the signs of words: but it is the one true Master, the incorruptible Truth itself, the only inner Master, who teaches; who also was made an outer one, that he might call us back from outer things to inner ones; and, taking the form of a servant, that his loftiness might be made known to those rising up, he deigned to appear humble to those lying down.

Let us be suppliants in his name, and, imploring through him the mercy of the Father, let us seek these things. For first, most briefly, it can be answered to those who ask whence corruption is, when it is said: From the fact that these natures which can be corrupted were not begotten of God, but made by him from nothing: which, since the higher account has shown to be good, no one can rightly say: God should not have made good things. But if anyone says: He should have made them supremely good, he ought to understand that the supreme good is the very one who made these goods.

37. 42. What harm, you say, would be done, if these things too were made supremely good? And yet, if any one of us asked—granting and believing God the Father to be the supreme good—whether there were any other supreme good, and whence it would devoutly seem to us to be, we could in no way rightly answer except: From God the Father, who is supremely good. What, then, is from him, let us remember to be born of him, not made by him from nothing, and therefore to be also supremely—that is, incorruptibly—good: and we see that it is unjustly demanded that the things he made from nothing be as supremely good as he is supremely good whom he begot of himself; whom, unless he had begotten as one, he would not have begotten as what he himself is, for he himself is one.

Wherefore brothers are sought for the only Son—through whom all good things were made by the Father from nothing—unskillfully and impiously, except from the fact that he deigned to appear in a man. For he is called in the Scriptures both only-begotten and firstborn: only-begotten of the Father, firstborn from the dead. And we saw, he says, his glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14); and Paul says: That he himself might be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom 8:29).

37. 43. But if we say: Then these goods which were made from nothing would no longer exist, but only the nature of God would exist; we shall envy such great goods; and it is an impious voice to think it an injury not to be what God is, and on that account to be unwilling that there be any good, because God is set before it. I beg you, suffer, O nature of the rational soul, to be somewhat less than God is, and so much less that nothing better than you should be after him. Suffer, I say, and grow gentle toward him; lest he yet thrust you back into the lowest things, where, through penal straits, the good that you are grows worthless to you again and again. You are proud against God, if you are indignant that he goes before you; and you think too insultingly of him, if you do not unspeakably rejoice that you are so great a good that he alone is more excellent.

This being established and made firm, do not say: God ought to have made me alone a nature; I would not wish that after me any good be made. For what is good after God ought not on that account to be the very last. And from this especially it appears how great a dignity he has bestowed on you, that God, who alone naturally rules over you, made other goods over which you too might rule. Nor wonder that they do not now serve you in every way, and that they sometimes even torment you: because your Lord has greater power over those things which serve you than you have over them, as over the servants of his servants.

What wonder, then, if to you who sin—that is, who do not obey your Lord—the things over which you ruled have been made penal? For what is so just, and what more just than God? For this human nature deserved in Adam, about which there is now no place to dispute: but nevertheless a just ruler is approved both by just rewards and by just punishments—by the happiness of those who live rightly and the punishment of those who sin. Nor yet are you left without mercy, you who are called by fixed measures of things and times to return.

Thus, by the right governance of the most high Founder, the descent has been made even to earthly goods, which are corrupted and reformed, so that you might have consolations mingled with punishment; so that you might both praise God, delighted by the order of goods, and flee to him, trained by the experiences of evils. Thus, insofar as earthly things serve you, they teach you that you are their mistress; but insofar as they are troublesome, they teach you to serve your Lord.

38. 44. Wherefore, although corruption is an evil, and although it is not from the Founder of natures, but is from this, that they were made from nothing: nevertheless it too, with him ruling and governing all that he made, is so ordered that it harms only the lowest natures, for the punishment of the damned and for the training and admonition of those returning, so that they may cling to the incorruptible God and remain incorrupt, which is our one good; as it is said through the prophet: But for me it is good to cling to God (Ps 73:28 (72:28)). Nor say this: God should not make corruptible natures. For insofar as they are natures, God made them; but insofar as they are corruptible, God did not make them; for corruption is not from him who alone is incorruptible.

If you grasp these things, give thanks to God; if you do not grasp them, be still, and do not rashly condemn what you do not yet understand; and, a suppliant to him who is the light of the mind, attend that you may understand. For when one says "corruptible nature," not one but two names are spoken. Likewise when one says "God made it from nothing," we hear not one but two names. Render, then, to these single things those single ones, so that when you hear "nature," it pertains to God; when you hear "corruptible," it pertains to nothing: yet in such a way that the corruptions themselves, although they are not from the art of God, are nevertheless to be disposed in his power, according to the order of things and the merits of souls.

Therefore we rightly say that reward and punishment are from him. For he so did not make corruption, that he can give over to corruption one who has deserved to be corrupted—that is, who himself has begun, by sinning, to corrupt himself—so that he may feel against his will the corruption that torments, who willingly committed the one that flatters.

39. 45. For not only in the Old Testament is it written: I make good things and create evils (Isa 45:7); but more evidently in the New, where the Lord says: Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do; but fear him who, when he has killed the body, has power to send the soul into hell (Matt 10:28; Luke 12:4). And that to a voluntary corruption a penal corruption is added by the divine judgment, the apostle Paul most manifestly attests, when he says: For the temple of God is holy, which you are: whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him (1 Cor 3:17). But if this had been said in the Old Law, with what invectives would these men make their attack, accusing God as though a corrupter!

Fearing which word, many Latin translators were unwilling to say will corrupt, but said God will destroy him: and, not deviating from the matter itself, they avoided the offense of the word. Although these men would inveigh no less against God the destroyer, if they found this in the Old Law or the Prophets.

But they are refuted by the Greek copies, in which it is most plainly written: Whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him. And if anyone asks them how this is said, so that God may not be thought a corrupter, they at once explain that will corrupt is said in the sense of "will hand over to corruption," or in whatever other way they can. With which mind, if they were toward the Old Law, they would both understand many things there to be wondered at, and would not, with hatred, tear at what they do not yet understand, but would with honor defer it.

40. 46. But if anyone does not believe that corruption is from nothing, let him set before himself these two, being and nonbeing, as if on different sides—for the sake of understanding, that we may walk more slowly with the slow: then let him set, as it were in the middle, something, for instance the body of a living creature, and let him ask himself this: while that body is being formed and is born, while its form grows, is nourished, gains strength, is made robust, is adorned, is made firm—insofar as it lasts and insofar as it is made stable—toward which side it tends, whether toward being or nonbeing: he will not doubt that it is indeed something even in its very beginnings; but the more it is made stable and firm in form and shape and vigor, the more it comes to be, and tends toward that side where being is set.

Now, then, let it begin to be corrupted; let all that state be weakened, let its powers languish, let its robustness wither, let its form be made unsightly, let the framework of its members fall apart, let the concord of parts waste away and flow off: let him ask now too, through this corruption, toward what it tends, whether toward being or nonbeing: I do not think anyone so blind and slow as to doubt what he should answer himself, and not to perceive that the more anything is corrupted, the more it tends toward perishing. But everything that tends toward perishing tends toward nonbeing.

Since, then, God must be believed to be unchangeably and incorruptibly, while what is called nothing is manifestly utterly nonbeing: and since you have set before yourself these—being and nonbeing—and have learned that the more the form is increased, the more each thing tends to be; the more corruption is increased, the more it tends not to be: why do you doubt to say, in each corruptible nature, what in it is from God and what is from nothing; since form is according to nature, corruption against nature? For form, when increased, compels being, and we confess that God supremely is: but corruption, when increased, compels nonbeing, and it is agreed that what is not is nothing.

Why, I say, do you doubt to say, in a corruptible nature—which you call both a nature and corruptible—what is from God, what from nothing? And why do you seek a nature contrary to God, whom, if you confess that he supremely is, you see that there is nothing contrary to him?

41. 47. Why, then, you say, does corruption take away what God gave to nature? It does not take it away, except where God permits; and he permits it there where he judges it most ordered and most just, according to the degrees of things and the merits of souls. For the form of a voice uttered passes away, and is destroyed by silence; and yet our speech is carried out by the departure and succession of passing words, and is becomingly and sweetly distinguished by the measured intervals of silences: so too the lowest beauty of temporal natures is such that it is carried out by the passing of things, and distinguished by the death of those being born. And if our perception and memory could grasp the order and measures of this beauty, it would so please us that we would not dare to call the failings by which it is distinguished corruptions. But because in a part of this beauty we labor, when the flowing temporal things we love desert us, we both pay the penalties of our sins, and are admonished to love the eternal things.

42. 48. Let us not, then, seek in this beauty what it did not receive; for it is lowest precisely because it did not receive what we seek: and in that which it did receive let us praise God, because he gave even to this—however lowest—so great a good of form. Yet let us not cling to it as its lovers; but, as praisers of God, let us pass beyond it, so that, set above it, we may judge concerning it, and not, bound to it, be judged in it. And let us hasten to that good which neither ranges through places nor rolls on with time, and from which all local and temporal natures receive their form and shape. To see which, let us cleanse the heart through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8). For those eyes are not to be prepared for beholding that good, by which is discerned this light spread out through places and not whole everywhere, but having one part here and another elsewhere. Rather let us purify that sight and gaze by which is discerned, as far as is allowed in this life, what is just, what is devout, what is the beauty of wisdom: which whoever discerns prefers far above the fullness of all local spaces; and perceives that, in order to discern these things, the gaze of his mind is not spread out through spatial expanses, but made firm by an incorporeal power.

43. 49. Since to this gaze the phantasms are very hostile, which our thought, drawn from the carnal sense, turns over and holds in imagined fashion, let us detest this heresy, which, following the trust of its own phantasms, has both broken apart and diffused the divine substance through spatial expanses—though infinite—as a formless mass, and has truncated it on one side, in order to find a place for evil; which it could not see to be not a nature but against nature: and it has adorned that very evil with so great a form and shapes and peace of parts thriving in each nature, because without these goods it could conceive no nature, so that the evils it reproaches there are buried under an abundance of countless goods.

But let this be the end of this volume: in others his other ravings will be refuted, with God permitting and helping.