At this time also Manes, mad in his wits, and namesake of the demon-possessed heresy, was arming the perversion of his reason—the demon, namely Satan himself the adversary of God, having put the man forward for the ruin of many. Barbarous indeed in his life, in both speech and manner, and demonic and frenzied in his nature, he attempted accordingly to fashion himself as Christ, and at times proclaimed himself to be the Paraclete and the Holy Spirit itself, puffed up with madness; and at times, like Christ, he chose twelve disciples as partners of his innovation.
Patching together false and godless doctrines collected from countless godless men long since extinct, he wiped them off, like some deadly poison, from the land of the Persians upon our part of the world; from which the impious name of the Manichaeans is even now prevalent among the multitude. Such, then, was the basis of this falsely-named knowledge as well, which sprang up secretly in the times indicated;