Being about to set forth and commit to memory the public confession and execration of crimes which Turbo, the disciple of Manes, made in the presence of Archelaus and the rest in Caschara, a city of Mesopotamia, I must at once appeal to the writings of that same Archelaus and rely chiefly upon them. For since he committed to writing, or ordered to be committed to writing, both those things which he had heard from the mouth of the repentant Turbo, and those things which the Manichaean himself more boldly objected in the two Catholic disputations, scarcely any room for doubt will remain that we, examining what is contained in the books of Archelaus, shall attain the truth of all things.
For whatever Beausobre has fabricated to the contrary, even on this occasion, in order to overturn the credibility of these things, will be able to harm us and the truth not at all, as we shall explain more clearly in its proper place. And first indeed, passing over the chief and fundamental errors of this sect, which we have already noted in the preceding, and which Turbo, first of all, execrated by his public confession, we set about to describe the other impious, futile, sacrilegious, and fabulous inventions. 1. Among these fables, then, those hold the principal place which the Manichaeans fabricate concerning the first production of men, and their fall and restoration.
Namely, when they assert that those two eternal beings, coexistent with one another and mutually opposed — the gods of light and of darkness — waging the greatest war between themselves, each fashioned a portion of mankind. In which production, when the author of darkness advanced his boundaries toward the light which had to be furnished, the good parent of light produced from his power a soul, which is called the mother of life; and, this man being first adorned and clothed as it were with the four elements, he was to fight downward against the darkness. But when the princes of darkness, as though provoked to battle, resisted the man, they inflicted the greatest force upon him and devoured of his armor, which is the soul.
The first man, therefore, being placed in so great a crisis, they fable that he likewise suffered a first ruin, fall, and destruction. Indeed the afflictions, sicknesses, and hardships of the soul and body of this first man, they affirmed, arose not from the crimes of disobedience and gluttony, but from the very darkness by which he was violently afflicted and oppressed. All these things, moreover, they say happened to man before heaven, earth, the luminaries, the firmament, and the spheres were created. Wherefore, before the first man came forth into the world, the living chaos of darkness already inhabited it, and, beseeching the father of lights, he was then kindly and mercifully heard;
namely, when there was sent into him another power, which had proceeded from the divine substance, which is called the living spirit; and descending, it stretched out its right hand to the cast-down and afflicted man, that it might lead him out of the darkness by which he had been imperiled. This mystery of impiety they not only retained in their minds, but the Manichaeans themselves openly professed it also by external rites and ceremonies. Namely, when, meeting one another, they even gave each other their right hands, so as, of course, by that sign most certainly to indicate that they had escaped from the bosom and prisons of darkness. 2. But no less insane and insipid were the things they philosophized about the very condition of the world.
For they invent that the living spirit, the founder of the world, clothed with three other powers which they do not name, descended in order to lead forth the princes; and going out into the firmament, of Jesus — which is the body, his sphere. They reckoned, therefore, that the firmament was animate, just as also the luminaries which we behold circling the firmament. In whose vital motions they wished so great a force to reside, that the wills of men, which ought to be subject to those same motions, were compelled to act with injury and destruction of free choice. Ridiculous things, moreover, they added to ridiculous.
When they reasoned about the creation, state, and motion of the earth, again asserting it to have been produced, they by no means believed that it was sustained in the midst of the world by a divine power, but that it was carried on the shoulders of a certain feigned Omophorus, who, when he grew weary from carrying it, trembles. And this, they say, is the cause of earthquakes beyond the appointed time. Altogether ludicrous indeed and blasphemous are the things they contrived concerning the motions of the earth's disc, which they affirmed to be the cause why the blessed Father might bring forth his Son from the bosoms into the heart of the earth and its inner parts. Then they said that matter, or the earth, produced plants and shoots of itself.
And when these had been stolen by certain princes, then the eternal Father called together all the chief princes, and took from them their several powers, and made this man according to the likeness of that first man, and put a soul into him. But what the Manichaeans understood by the names of the chief princes is by no means indicated in that confession of Turbo. That one thing alone is clearly conjectured from the preceding words: that they contended for two offspring of the human race, of which the former, since it preceded the Adamite offspring, opened perhaps that inept and most wretched path to those who in more recent times championed the pernicious and erroneous opinion of the Pre-Adamites. 3.
But they also endeavor to derive from the very latest offspring of this man another cause why the blessed Father sent his Son into the world. Not indeed in the manner by which the Scriptures testify that the mystery of the Incarnation was foreordained. But they said that the Father was led to that mission of his beloved Son by the hardships and afflictions which the soul of this man suffered in the body. For this cause indeed, and on account of the Omophorus, the Manichaeans taught that the Father sent his Son. Whose coming into the world, indeed, they fabled to have happened not in true and passible assumed flesh, but only in a feigned and apparent likeness of man. So that, of course, he might appear a man to the eyes of others, who in very fact was not a man;
although, being born of a woman, he was thought by men to be a man. But if anyone should inquire the end of this mission and coming, it was denied that it looked to the salvation of man; nor indeed did they think that man had been subject to any other ruin or fall than that which arose from the bonds of flesh and body. For overturning and repelling all these evils, they affirmed that a certain machine, contrived for the salvation of souls, was then constructed; a machine formed with one wheel having twelve pitchers, by which the souls of the living were drawn up, so that, being brought into the sight of the sun, they might be purged by its rays, and, being purged, might be delivered to the lower luminary, namely the moon.
But in describing the course and motion of those two luminaries, how many and what sort of fictions did they not devise? For they invented that the sun and moon were two ships, or ferrying skiffs, coursing about the orb of the heavens, this method being observed, namely, that the moon, first laden with the souls of men, transmitted them to the eastern region; where the souls, drawn up and down through certain pitchers and brought back, those ships were loaded and unloaded, until the souls themselves could withdraw themselves from the bodily afflictions by which they are pressed.
They affirmed that every soul, and every animal that moves, draws a part from the substance of the good Father, adding that the moon, when it has handed over the burden of souls which it bears to the ages of the Father, those (namely the living things) remain in the pillar of glory, which is called the perfect man. This man, moreover (they subjoined), is the pillar of light, which is filled with pure souls, and this is the cause of the salvation of souls. Moreover, they were certainly persuaded that the souls of certain beings are subject to death; but concerning the cause of their destruction, how ineptly, how stupidly did they fable! For they invented a certain comely and adorned virgin, exceedingly elegant, who by stealth assailed the princes who are in the firmament, led forth and crucified by the living spirit.
That in affirming this delirium they clung to the opinion of the ancient pagan Greeks, the following words of Turbo plainly make manifest. When they taught that this anonymous virgin (namely Venus) appeared to the males as a comely woman; but exhibited herself to the females as a fair and desirable youth. By the beauty and elegance of adornment of which likeness the princes of the firmament, being captivated, so burned with the love of lusts toward her, that, when they ran after her, she straightway withdrew herself from their eyes. But then that great prince produces clouds out of himself, that in his wrath he might darken the whole world.
Who, when he has been greatly troubled, just as a man sweats after labor, so also this prince sweats from his tribulation. That they wished to refer this to Jove, the prince of all the planets, can be easily conjectured from the writings of the heathen. But they assert that the prince of harvests is sometimes compelled to undergo these same evil vicissitudes. Who, however, when he finds himself deceived by that virgin, is kindled and inflamed with such great wrath, that he pours out famine upon the earth, and afflicts men themselves with death. Hence indeed they taught that there exist two worlds, each inhabited by men. This lower one, visible and observable, subject to the upper in such a way, that all men who are below have their roots bound above.
Wherefore again they fabled concerning the same virgin, discoursing thus: When, therefore, the prince of harvests has been deceived by the virgin, then he will begin to cut off the roots of men; and when their roots have been cut off, a pestilence is produced, and thus they die. But if he shakes the upper parts of the root more strongly, an earthquake occurs, and there follows a shaking of the Omophorus. Likewise they believed that death was derived from these evils, admitting absolutely no distinction between the hardships and destruction of bodies and of souls. 3.
But after this Turbo himself, who had resolved to lay open and execrate all the fabulous principles of the Manichaeans' arcane philosophy, plainly explained to that same bishop Archelaus, to Marcellus, and the rest, before whom he was bidden to present himself, what the Manichaeans taught, together with the school of the Epicureans, concerning the transmigration of souls. Therefore he subjoined these things. But I will tell you how souls too are transferred into other bodies. In the present body, which the spirit now first inhabits, a little something is purged from the soul. It is then transfused into a dog, or into a camel, or into the body of some other animal. But if the soul, which is shut up in the prison of the present body, has committed homicide, it is now transfused into the bodies of elephants;
if it reaped a harvest, into mice. They explained the series of these vicissitudes, or transmigrations, more broadly, running through all kinds of things, so that, a step being made from beasts to plants, to vegetables, to shoots, and to the very inanimate things themselves, they professed that the human spirit could be infused into and transmuted into anything whatsoever. All which things, when we pondered them with ourselves, such mutually contradictory principles of the Manichaeans stirred up our astonishment, so that we could scarcely even judge that the falsity would not have been perceived by anyone, even ignorant, but of sound mind. Of which kind especially are those things which they affirmed concerning the names and properties of the soul.
Namely, when they taught that the following attributes and properties belong to the soul: Mind, of course, sense, prudence, intellect, and thought. To all which indeed we know the natures of beasts, or the properties of vegetables, or the substances of insensible things to be more contrary and alien, than we understand light to differ from darkness, heaven from earth, and the stars from the elements. Since, therefore, the Manichaeans themselves contended that no concord at all nor any bond of society could be had among these things of the lower order;
how, I ask, did they reason so ineptly and so stupidly in blurting out that the substances of thinking beings are transfused into hay, or into a bean, or into barley, or into ears of grain, or into vegetables, so that they too are reaped and mown by the reapers? In like manner also they discoursed about those eating bread, or about those killing a chicken, saying: And he who eats bread, must himself also be eaten like bread. But if he shall have killed a chicken, he too will be a chicken.
But also concerning the souls of those who here on earth abound in riches, they fabricated that this law had been established: that, as they depart from the present bodily life, those souls should still be cast back into the bodies of the poor, first compelled to undergo all the labors and straits of mendicancy, after which they should then be handed over to be tortured with eternal punishments. Nor indeed did they cling to figments of this sort alone in the question concerning the transmigrations of souls: but since they moreover conceded that body and matter are the principle of all visible and sensible things, therefore they inferred that it was as it were necessary that he who has planted a Persea-tree must pass through many ages, until that Persea which he planted should fall.
And similar things they blurted out concerning the building of houses, or concerning those who wash in waters: He who has built himself a house is dispersed through all bodies; if anyone washes himself in water, he wounds his own soul. Which last delirium indeed is proof that the Manichaeans shrank in horror not only from any civil and profane ablutions of natural water, but also from that which Christ the Lord had instituted for the regeneration of men. These things, therefore, and others not unlike them, disclose to us that the men of the Manichaean sect despised and condemned all ornament and cultivation in this mortal life.
And that on this account they were excessively solicitous for and delighted in poverty and want, in the squalor of filth and uncleanness, all of which, under a feigned mask of piety and religion, they sacrilegiously strove to simulate outwardly. For what else does that zeal indicate, by which they sought to be nourished on the substances of others and sustained by the sweat of others? What else do the cupidities betray, with which they especially seethed, so that those who in this sect were called the elect might be fed on the best foods, procured for themselves out of the bounty and offerings of others?
For the Manichaeans, in order to open a wider road for their gain, and to stir up others to provide for their necessities and mercifully indulge them, more frequently threatened them with the punishments of Gehenna and other grievous (as I think) arcane hardships, saying: And he who does not furnish food to the elect is subjected to the punishments of Gehenna, and is transformed into the bodies of catechumens, until he does many works of mercy. Wherefore the hearers, deterred by such threats, if there was anything of the best in their foods, offered that to those elect. But the elect did not feed on the foods of others before they had used that superstitious prayer, which the bishop Archelaus, from the confession of Turbo, described in these words:
And when they wished to eat bread, they first pray, saying these things to the bread: Neither did I reap you, nor grind you, nor thresh you, nor put you into the oven. Another made you and brought you to me. I eat you innocently. But after the Manichaean uttered these things secretly and within himself, with no one hearing, turning to him who had brought the offerings of food, he feigned to render thanks to him with this following response: I have prayed for you. And when he judged the work altogether unlawful to do, he who fed on the bread and foods of others added, in testimony of his superstitious sect: If anyone reaps, he shall be mown down. Likewise if anyone puts grain into the mill, he too shall be put into the mill. If anyone kneads, he shall be kneaded.
Likewise if anyone bakes bread, he shall be baked. These, therefore, and other evils of this sort, they imprecated upon those who dealt mercifully with them, and from whom they received foods or nourishment: which monstrous manner of acting lays open both the wickedness of their minds and the excessive savagery of their nature. 4. But now Turbo himself proceeds to explain more clearly, before Archelaus, all the fabulous figments concerning the essence of many worlds, which we touched lightly above. And again he said that there are other worlds besides this one which we see, upon which the luminaries of this one rise when they have set here.
And devising as it were new deliriums, they neglected to understand the structure of the universe and the properties of earth and air, although they made a show of giving more than fair attention to the studies of mathematics and astrology. They wished the earth to be harmed by those who walk upon it. Likewise the air by those who raise weights on high; because the air is the soul of men, and of animals, and of birds, and of fishes, and of creeping things, and they believed it to be a paradise (which is called a world). Whose trees are all concupiscences and the other seductions corrupting the thoughts of men. In defending which dogma, they perhaps abused the words of John taken from his first Epistle. Explaining them, namely, by depraved allegories of this sort.
Then that a certain peculiar tree was planted in this paradise, from which good is known, they themselves also now believed; but following the preceding allegories, they said that there Jesus, and his knowledge which is in the world, is designated, which whoever receives, discerns good from evil. Wherefore Turbo subjoined: Since the world is not God's, but is from the Father of matter, both it and all things contained in it must be exterminated. But if the soul goes forth from the world and has not known the truth, it will be handed over to the demons, that they may tame it in the Gehenna of fire. And after it has been chastised, it will be transfused into other bodies, that it may be tamed, and thus it is cast into that great fire, until the consummation. 5.
But after Turbo had narrated these and other similar things from the doctrine of his teacher with equal execration, he undertook to explain what judgment or opinion the Manichaeans made or held concerning the ancient prophets. For they did not believe that these had ever prophesied true things, whom they judged to have been instituted and seduced by the spirit of impiety and falsehood and by the most wicked prince of darkness. Therefore, their mind being blinded (they said) by the father of lies, they always foretold false things unto the destruction of those who put faith in their prophecies. Hence he subjoined: And if anyone follows their words, he will die forever, bound within the mass, because he did not learn the knowledge of the Paraclete.
For this cause indeed, Manes himself commanded his elect alone, who are no more than seven in number, that when they had ceased eating they should pray, and should send exorcized oil upon the head, many names being invoked for the confirmation of faith. But what that exorcized oil was, with which by that profane and superstitious rite they anointed the head, and moreover what names were invoked by those praying, Turbo himself utterly kept silent, because he was ignorant of them. For Manes himself and his chief pseudo-apostles, who always boasted that they knew lofty things, endeavored to wrap up their impiety in certain arcane mysteries, lest, the disgrace of so many most wicked sacrileges being laid bare, the foulness of their diabolical religion should be known.
At length the mind shudders to transcribe those things which they affirmed concerning Moses, the prophets, and the ancient priests. Namely, when they contended that none other than the prince of darkness had spoken to these prophets; and that therefore no distinction at all should be granted between the Jews and the Christians and the Gentiles, since one and the same God, subject to passions and concupiscences, was worshipped by them all. This God, therefore, seduces them in their concupiscences, because he is not the God of truth. And on account of this, whoever hope in that God… are to be handed over into bonds with him, because they did not hope in the God of truth. For he spoke with them according to his own concupiscences.
These blasphemies, I say, we are ashamed to attribute to and to set down against God the best and greatest, and our holy religion shudders at them; especially since we are taught by that same Turbo that this great and honorable Lord of Sabaoth, whose name the angels of heaven adore, whom the creatures of the whole world venerate with fear, and before whom the peoples of the nether world tremble, whose nature is the highest goodness and whose power is omnipotence, was assailed by them so audaciously and held in contempt, when they said that he possessed the nature of a man and was the father of concupiscence. And for this reason the more simple-minded among them adore concupiscence, reckoning it to be a god.
This God, therefore, whom they contend to be the author of malice and of sin, they asserted—on the authority of Scythianus, the elder chief of this sect—ought to be delivered up in chains along with the Jews, Christians, and gentiles who adore him. All of which things assuredly could be devised only by stupid and wicked men. There are, however, two further chief fabrications of the Manichaeans which must be brought forward before we proceed to describe their propagation. The one must be referred to the fashioning of Adam and Eve, the other to the destruction and end of this visible world. As to the first, then, the Manichaeans abused these words of Genesis:
'Let us make man to our own image and likeness,' to which they added these further words, 'and according to that form which we see.' Here they represented the prince addressing his fellow-princes, as if he said: 'Come, give me of the light which we have received, and let us make man according to our own form, in which we are princes, and according to that form which we see'—that is, the first man. How many and what sort of ravings these words contain, who indeed does not perceive? And these are injurious to the supreme God, who admits no colleague at all equal to himself, who can receive from no other outside himself either light, or attribute, or anything else whatsoever; who has in himself no external and visible form according to which he might have fashioned his creatures;
who at last created Adam himself, not according to the form of some other first man, but out of nothing, unto his own image and likeness alone. And so, even with the light of nature resisting, they invented several equal gods bearing a visible and corporeal form, who created man, who likewise made Eve as well, giving her of their own concupiscence to deceive Adam. Nothing indeed is more shameful, or nothing more wicked than these blasphemies, by which they too boldly represent the Creator of our first parents. Or could he be the author of evil and of concupiscence, who—as the Manichaeans themselves affirmed—could neither have any part with the world, nor be able to rejoice over the evils that happen in it? Were they not speaking sheer ravings?
Scythianus, moreover, who was at length the chief author of this sect, speaking in his writings of the end and destruction of this visible world, has these words: 'When he shall have made manifest his image, then the omophorus himself shall leave the earth beneath him and thus that great fire shall be let loose which shall consume the universe, in which all the souls of sinners shall be tormented eternally. Then, however' (they added) 'all these things shall come to pass, when Jesus appears in a little ship, together with the mother of life and twelve pilots, having with them also the virgin of light, and a certain third elder, whose name Turbo himself in no way disclosed.'
'But when that great living spirit shall appear, existing in his own ship, there shall be made a wall of that great fire, a wall of wind, and of air, and of the inner water. But all things shall dwell in the moon until the fire consumes the whole world. And after these things there shall be a restoration of the two luminaries, and the princes shall dwell in the lower regions.' By these fabrications, therefore, they most wickedly corrupted all those prophecies which the sacred writings teach and proclaim concerning the destruction of the world, the last day of judgment, and the majesty of the Judge, so that, with the religion of Christ undermined, men might utterly withdraw from the truth and be turned to learning fabulous and insane fictions.
Wherefore Turbo closes his faithful confession, and his execration of this diabolical doctrine, with these words: 'This is the whole doctrine which Manes handed on to his three disciples, and he commanded them to set out into the three regions of the world.' That the chief authors of the Manichaeans, then, in their studies of philosophy and theology raved as impiously as ineptly, I judge to have been made sufficiently plain from the confession of Turbo, consigned to writing by Archelaus, bishop of Caschar, or written at his command. But in reviewing the fabrications and impieties of these men, we have had to undertake a very great labor.
Since Archelaus's disputation of this kind—even as it was committed to print by the diligence of Zacagni—is crammed with many verbal windings and with barbarous and unusual turns of phrase derived from the Persian, Syriac, and Mesopotamian tongue, and abounds in so many and so grave errors, which crept into it either through the negligence of various translators or through the carelessness of copyists—nevertheless that execration of Turbo contains nothing false in itself; it has nothing of doubtful reliability, save certain harsh phrases little suited to the usage of the schools, yet contemporary with Archelaus; for at that time those heresies had not yet arisen which in succeeding ages, rejected by the Church in her councils, furnished to the very Fathers a more perfect and proper method of speaking.
and which the theologians too were bound religiously to follow. Augustine lends his support, who here and there in his Works reports such trifles and Manichaean fables, which that holy doctor sets forth not only as things to be guarded against by all, but also attacks and overthrows as exceedingly harmful to the truth of religion. Wherefore it is by no means permissible to suspect that this work of Archelaus, and the other things pertaining to the disputations of Diodorus or Trypho, are not genuine, as all the ancients have attested; and we reserve for ourselves to prove this more abundantly, being about to draw up a catalogue of those who have made mention of Turbo's confession.