As we undertake to describe the other part of the Manichaean history, many, and indeed most grave, difficulties confront us; chiefly because we must speak of the disciples of Manes and the genuine names of those who, after the death of their master, propagated this heresy more widely here and there; or designate those provinces and places in which within a short time it was introduced to undermine the Catholic religion; or, finally, review those Fathers who strove to destroy and refute the books, letters, and fabulous writings of those same heretics. In performing this task, since ancient and recent writers very often disagree among themselves, we reckon it altogether difficult that anything certain can be established.
Especially because Beausobre, indulging only his own partiality and preferences, set before himself and pursued those rules of criticism which do not serve to investigate the truth, but rather those very rules to which, as we have seen, he perpetually clung in the preceding matters. To exhibit here, at the threshold of this second book, some specimen of that manner of proceeding, we judge superfluous, since, besides the examples already given in the previous book, countless other falsehoods, calumnies, and fabulous heretical interpretations remain, which we are prepared to note and refute in their proper place and time.
So that we may show how fraudulently, and with less learning, he wrote down many things which we have judged to contain nothing but manifest heretical error, or at least to lead to heresy. Meanwhile, however, we can by no means pass over in silence the license and liberty which he himself employs in extolling those Fathers who either described or attacked the Manichaean heresy. These he perpetually accuses as though guilty of ignorance, as though inconsistent with themselves; but he carps at them as contradicting their own statements, and asserts that they did not perfectly understand the systems and mysteries of the Manichaeans—so that that glory and honor should be owed to himself alone, namely, that he penetrated more successfully the whole philosophy, theology, and religion of that heresy.
I too indeed confess that I have stumbled upon many things in this kind of writing which are obscure and wrapped in much darkness, and which cannot be understood by the writer's zeal and diligence. But when similar matters confronted us, we deemed it best to report the opinions of others, and sometimes to subscribe to them; or rather to confess that we do not know what lies entirely hidden, than to run off into fabulous and foolish narratives, to which no faith could be lent. Here, then, the reader has a general but rough idea of those things which, in the preliminary discourse to the second part of the Manichaean History, Beausobre described.
But since we cannot express in detail all things in these introductions, we shall by no means neglect to report more fully, in the further progress of this work, whatever we shall judge necessary.